


Ælysium

by LavenderJam



Category: His Dark Materials (TV), His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
Genre: Abortion, Alternate Ending, Brain Injury, Brand New World, Daemon Swapping, Daemon Touching, Dislocations and Fractures, Explorers In Love, F/M, Field Surgery, Hunting, Mad Scientists Let Loose, Mild Peril, Science Experiments
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-22
Updated: 2020-11-22
Packaged: 2021-03-09 18:19:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 21,850
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27670579
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LavenderJam/pseuds/LavenderJam
Summary: “We should have died,” she cried. “We should have fallen into the abyss and been obliterated.”The golden monkey stroked her tangled, coarse hair with his little black hand. “It’s not much further now. And then we can sleep, and then – ”“Andthen?”she said. “And then we shall wake in this strange new world, our only company a dying, drooling, useless man, who may never be well again – ” She gasped and pressed her hand over her mouth, the tears glinting on her face in the moonlight, as if her cheeks were decorated with silver charms.(Marisa and Asriel kill Metatron, avoid the abyss and escape into another world.)
Relationships: Lord Asriel/Marisa Coulter
Comments: 32
Kudos: 98





	Ælysium

**Author's Note:**

> “I can't bear the thought of oblivion, Asriel,” she continued. “Sooner anything than that. I used to think pain would be worse - to be tortured forever - I thought that must be worse... But as long as you were conscious, it would be better, wouldn't it? Better than feeling nothing, just going into the dark, everything going out for ever and ever?” - The Amber Spyglass, Philip Pullman

Marisa stared down into the abyss, the endless, unrelenting darkness, and clutched the squalling monkey to her breast. She’d expected to see Metatron falling for longer, but as soon as they’d hurled him over the edge, his wings snapped, his throat torn to pieces by Stelmaria’s strong jaws, he’d been engulfed by the absolute nothingness of the ugly, jagged rip in the fabric of the universe. The only sign of disturbance had been a faint plume of Dust, the steady stream of golden particles interrupted as the angel was swallowed by oblivion.

Marisa stumbled backwards, the monkey still shivering against her, his arms wrapped around her neck. Her shoulder and collarbone throbbed, bruises blooming across her skin as if someone was printing the flesh like silk, blotting her cells with mulberry ink. She blinked furiously, her heartbeat pounding in her ears, a glorious, harsh reminder of her enduring vitality.

 _Metatron was dead_ , _and they were alive._

She laughed then, a manic, musical laugh, and tears fell down her cheeks. She expected to hear a noise from Asriel, but he was lying motionless several feet away, Stelmaria sprawled listlessly beside him. Her fur was matted with the angel’s iridescent blood: it sparkled even in the darkness, and the Dust settling over the monkey made him glitter too. They looked almost angelic themselves.

“Asriel,” Marisa said, limping over to her lover and falling to her knees beside him, her shoulder and arm pulsing with pain. “He’s dead, my love, he’s dead. Can you hear me?”

Asriel opened his eyes and Marisa gasped: they were filled with blood. His hand began to bat around on the ground as if he was searching for something, his fingers brushing her knee. She picked it up and clutched it to her chest.

“Can you hear me?” she asked again, and Asriel gave a slow nod, groaning at the movement. Marisa swallowed as she noticed the blood pooling beneath his head, shimmering like liquid quartz as Dust doused the treacly substance in gold.

Marisa looked to the ceiling of the cavern, but saw only darkness. “How did you reach this place?” she said to Asriel. He opened his mouth but an unintelligible rasp was all that emerged.

“The – the caverns,” Stelmaria murmured, and the monkey’s eyes melted at the sound of the snow leopard’s dulcet tones. “We found a way – a way – a way down.”

Marisa nodded. “Can you stand?” she said. Asriel tried to speak again, but the effort caused him to splutter, and she saw his chest quiver and tense with the exertion. He moaned, his eyes leaking, his tears mixing with the blood on his face so that red drops slid down his cheeks.

“No help will reach us here,” she said, and he squeezed her hand. “We have to try and find our way back.”

He gave another small nod, and Marisa blew out a slow breath. “Right,” she said, and gently hauled him into a sitting position.

The whine he released was unlike any sound she’d heard from Asriel before, and she was horrified to find her arm soaked with blood as she clutched his torso to her chest.

“Ssh,” she said, watching the monkey coax Stelmaria to her feet. “That’s right. Come on.”

As if their supply of miracles hadn’t been exhausted for the day, she managed to get him to his feet, and found that despite his disorientation and pain his legs were strong enough to support his massive frame with her help. Marisa hooked her one functioning shoulder beneath his arm and began to limp back towards the cavern network. The monkey was urging Stelmaria along, the snow leopard stumbling over her own paws and intermittently careering into the rockface as a result. The great dæmon’s mouth hung open, and drool dripped from her chin to the ground as she meandered along the side of the abyss.

By the time they reached the next chamber, Marisa and the monkey could only stare at each other. It was so small and gnarled, nothing like the wide cavern, the only light the river of falling Dust. “We can’t carry them back up there,” the monkey said, crawling further into the tunnel and looking around. “Marisa, there’s no way.”

She looked at Asriel then, his eyes closed as he leaned against her, most of him dead weight. “Then we’ll have to leave them,” she whispered, and the monkey’s eyes widened.

“No!” he said, fleeing back to Stelmaria.

“Is there another option?” she said, choking on her tears. Asriel’s head lolled against her, and the familiar smell of metal and musk filled her nose. She began to weep.

Before her dæmon could respond, they were both startled by a great whoosh of air, and then almost blinded by the towering column of light that appeared before them, blazing and brilliant, which coalesced into the angel she recognised as Xaphania.

The angel’s gaze swept over the two battered humans. “Metatron?”

Marisa could hardly force out the word. “D-dead.”

Xaphania breathed a great sigh of relief, and it felt like a tempest tearing through a town. She looked to Lord Asriel. “He is fading.”

Marisa swallowed. “I know.” She unhooked his arm gently and set him against the rock face. He groaned as his back made contact with the wall, but he managed to hold himself up, his head leaning against a jagged bulge in the basalt, a trickle of blood appearing from behind his head and staining his shirt.

Marisa started to move closer to the angel, but as she took her first step away from Asriel she felt his hand clasp hers like a vice. His eyes were closed, Stelmaria was slumping beside him, but in that grip was the inexorable force of the man she knew, the man who’d waged war against God and won. She squeezed his hand in return and stayed put.

Xaphania watched the exchange and moved closer to them. “I can show you another route out of the mountain,” the angel said, and Marisa breathed a ragged sigh of relief.

“Will it lead us back to the fortress?” Marisa asked, glancing at her dying lover. She knew that there were military medics and shamans and healers from other worlds in Asriel’s army, and she had to believe that they would move heaven and earth to save their fearless commander, if only they could reach Asriel’s stronghold in time.

To Marisa’s dismay, the angel shook her head. “It’s not safe for you to return. It’s not safe for you out there at all. There is a witch with an arrow bound for your throat, the Church’s many branches continue to wage war, and when news of Metatron’s demise spreads there will be chaos unlike anything you can imagine. You are both injured. You will surely die.”

“The war is not over, then,” Marisa said. “They will need him. They will need _us_.”

“The Regent is dead, as is the Authority. There is more fighting to be done, but your part is over.” Xaphania looked at their broken bodies. “You could not do anymore, even if it were your greatest desire.”

Marisa pressed her lips together, tears coming to her eyes. “And Lyra?” she asked, her voice hoarse. “My – ” She paused, looking down at Asriel, his hand still gripping hers with all the force that remained in him. “Our daughter. Is she…”

“She has found her dæmon, and she and the boy are safe. The prophecy will be fulfilled, and she will survive. They will build the republic of heaven.”

Marisa let out a great cry and bowed her head. The monkey’s hand ceased its stroking of Stelmaria’s weary skull and instead held the great dæmon to his breast in relief. Asriel’s hand squeezed hers, so tightly that she felt her knuckles might crack.

There was a great crash from above, and the mountain rumbled. Xaphania looked to the sky, as if she could see through the layers of basalt to the war waging above them. “You will be discovered soon. There isn’t much time. Follow me.”

“Where will you take us, if not to the fortress, and not to the battle?”

If Xaphania had been several thousand years younger, she would have rolled her eyes at the woman’s incessant questions. “Follow me or die. That is the choice before you.”

Marisa turned then to watch the ghosts as they flowed towards the window, sighing and shrieking and rejoicing at the prospect of their atoms melding back into the living world. The monkey left Stelmaria and climbed delicately to Marisa’s shoulder, burying his face in her hair. “Marisa, not yet, _please_. It’s not our time.”

Another great explosion rumbled through the earth. “Quickly now,” Xaphania said, and Marisa nodded. She hauled Asriel back to his feet, supporting him as best she could, and limped behind the angel, moaning as each heavy step jarred her aching torso.

The angel guided them through the curves of the mountain, drowning out the Dust-light with her own ethereal glow, and Marisa and Asriel stumbled through the caverns behind her, intertwined, their hands using the coal-black walls as support, each step draining another ounce of life from their trembling bodies. After an hour of embittered staggering, Marisa lost her footing on an uneven patch of ground, and she let out a deep cry as Asriel’s entire body came to rest against her, her small frame responsible for keeping them both upright. “You aren’t going to help me at all?” she snapped, trembling as Asriel moaned against her.

The angel looked over the pair, her eyes softening. “I am weaker even than you. This guidance is the only help I can give.”

Eventually they reached the ground, bursting out of another crack in the mountain into a thick forest. Marisa laid Asriel against a tree and fell to her knees, clutching her agonising shoulder with a howl. Asriel was pale and sallow, his shirt soaked with blood. Stelmaria whined, falling to his side and nuzzling her head against his filthy palm. Marisa remembered floating down to meet Asriel in Metatron’s blazing arms, carried by his enormous wings, and looked down at their mortal feet with a scowl.

The sound of rapid fire drew the whole troupe’s gaze to the sky, and Xaphania held her great wing above their heads like a shield as shrapnel rained down over the plain.

“We are close,” Xaphania said, and Asriel wheezed in response, as if a hand was gripping his throat, and slowly squeezing the life from him. “We must continue.”

They trudged on, Asriel dragged by Marisa once more, tears streaming down her dirty, bruised face, until Xaphania stopped some distance ahead at the edge of a thicket of great trees, next to another wide plain. As she stepped closer to the angel, grunting with every awful step, the air began to glisten and pulse. Marisa squinted. She wondered if she was hallucinating from the pain and the exhaustion, or if her tears were acting as a prism, morphing the air and trees and angel into oscillating structures. But as they arrived beside Xaphania, she realised that the shimmer was real, and fixed. It was a window.

“Go,” Xaphania urged them. “Go through.”

Marisa set Asriel down by another tree, Stelmaria collapsing into his lap and weakly licking the blood from his neck. Marisa stared at the glimmering gash in the air. She could see lush grass ruffled by a gentle breeze; flocks of lilac birds; clean, bright sunlight bouncing off a lake in the distance. It looked idyllic, and peaceful. Marisa frowned.

“Go to another world?” she said, reaching out her good hand and letting her fingers slide through and feel the new air on her skin. The breeze was warm.

“It’s your only option.”

Marisa nodded absentmindedly, sticking her torso through and taking a deep breath. The air was hot but not humid, like inhaling the steam in the sweat cabins of the far north. A bird flew overhead, its wings green and breast red. “It’s not our world,” Marisa murmured, stroking the monkey’s head as he climbed to her shoulder and tasted the air. She pulled her head back through and turned to the angel. “What’s there? Who lives there?”

“I do not know,” Xaphania said. “I have never been through this window.”

Marisa looked stricken. “It’s utterly unknown? How can you be sure that we’ll be safer there than here?”

At that moment, great claps of thunder rolled across the sky, and lightning sparked above the Clouded Mountain. “They know,” Xaphania said. “They know that Metatron has fallen.” The angel looked at the woman. “You are not safe here, that much must be clear.” 

The sky was full of lightning now, red and purple and onyx, and the sound of gunfire and screams from the valley intensified. “Asriel,” Marisa said, bending down beside him. “Shall we?”

He lifted his hand to stroke her face. He was clumsy, and could only bat against her bruised cheek. She used her own hand to press his palm to her face.

“He’s dying,” the monkey rasped in her ear, his little form quivering.

Marisa looked through the window again. Even here, surrounded by war, the sky a blaze of anger, she could feel the tranquillity emanating from the new world before her.

“We’ll go through and rest,” she said, as much to herself as to Asriel and their tired souls. “And then we can come back, and finish what has been started. We can find – ” She broke off, her throat thick. “We can find Lyra.” 

“You should not plan to return,” Xaphania said. “You will always be hunted for what you have done.”

Marisa turned to protest even the suggestion of such lunacy, but a deep roar rang through the trees before she could speak, and the gunfire was suddenly close. “Hurry,” Xaphania said. “Go. Go now.”

Marisa helped Asriel to his feet and hauled him through the window, Stelmaria and the monkey lugging themselves behind their limping humans.

The change was instantaneous. The gunfire became a distant irritation, a nagging knocking in the back of her mind, and the dry, hot air filled her lungs, her chest, her arms, until her whole body was suffused with warmth. It smelled sweet, almost, and Marisa could see that the trees by the water were dotted with colourful fruit. Her mouth began to water. The only sounds were the ripple of the grass in the wind, the birds singing in the trees, waves lapping against shore some distance away. Stepping into this world felt like every cell of her body had sighed with relief.

Marisa laid Asriel down on the grass, placing his cracked skull against the ground as softly as she could manage. His eyes were open, though from his prone position he could only take in the sky: it was blue, a rich blue like that of a perfect summer’s day in Oxford, but the clouds were twisted into rolls, little curls, the likes of which he’d never seen before. Even in his addled state, his brow twitched, the aberration noted and ready to be picked apart at a later date. A burst of energy flowed through Stelmaria, and she curled herself around him, laying her head on his chest.

Marisa returned to the window and looked for the angel. “Xaphania?” she hissed.

For a terrifying second, she worried that the angel might have flown away already, but soon the swathes of light began to engulf one another and the glowing being appeared before her again. “Yes?”

“I cannot care for myself with nothing,” she said. “Nor tend to him. I need supplies. There might be nothing in this world, as you said, and we can hardly travel.”

The angel sighed. “It will be dangerous for me to return. It may lead others to you. And I have more work to do.”

“Please, Xaphania,” Marisa said, her eyes filling with tears. “We are half-dead after that ordeal, after tearing ourselves to pieces to kill _your_ Regent. And we will surely die here too, like this. It will perhaps be more peaceful, but we will be no less dead. If you truly want to save us, then please, bring us supplies. Sustenance. Perhaps even shelter.”

The angel looked at the Authority’s floating citadel, once iridescent and ethereal, now dark and angry and pulsing. She sighed again. “Return to the window tonight, after dark. Supplies will be waiting. But that’s all I can do for you. Expect nothing further.”

“Thank you,” Marisa said, reaching out and taking the angel’s hand, the ancient appendage soft and light like a cloud.

“Stay out of sight until then,” Xaphania warned. “It is unlikely, but someone could find this window and cross.”

“I understand. We’ll stay hidden.” Marisa paused and considered the angel, her primeval face riveted like it had been carved from the most precious marble. “Xaphania, if I may ask one more question… Metatron is dead. Why are you helping us?” 

“Lord Asriel is a great man, and a fearless commander. He has been able to do what we rebel angels have been trying to do for millennia. Tyranny shall reign no longer, and cruelty is no longer destiny. To destroy Metatron was a great feat, the greatest, and worthy of recompense.” The angel studied the woman in return, noting the weary pride in her dark eyes, the ferocity that emanated from her, even as she stood here beaten and broken and imminently exiled. “But he could not have done it alone, of that I am certain. And so any gratitude I have for him must also be bestowed upon you.”

Marisa nodded, looking around the great forest, inhaling the smell of gunpowder and blood. “Will people know?” she asked. “What we did, how we saved them? Will Lyra – ” She pressed her hand over her mouth. 

“The deed is done, and it will change all the worlds. That is enough.”

Marisa wanted to scowl, but faced with this impassive, ancient creature she thought better of it. Instead, she held the angel’s gaze. “Metatron looked inside me,” she said, almost with glee, and the angel saw the woman’s power, her boldness, her brilliance. A bolt of cold pierced her ancient chest. “He saw me: my nature, my heart. Can you see it too?”

Xaphania’s expression remained unreadable. “Yes.”

Marisa stood before the angel, a being almost as old as time itself, and straightened her back. “And what do _you_ see?”

“There is so much darkness inside you,” the angel said. “More than I have ever seen in anyone.” Xaphania peered through the window at Asriel’s twitching form. “There is great darkness within him too. A different shade, but no less potent.”

“But you’re still coming to our aid.”

“This is no absolution,” the angel said. Marisa nodded. The angel surveyed her again, her eyes probing the deepest recesses of the woman’s being, exhausted suddenly as a lifetime of loathing and rage and malice washed over her. The hatred was so deep, so whole. “And you wouldn’t accept it if it was,” Xaphania said, as it dawned on her, and Marisa smiled faintly.

Marisa turned back to their new world. “We’ll be safe here?”

The angel paused. “For now, it is the safest choice you have. And one day, it will be the safest place of all.”

Marisa frowned, but before she could ask Xaphania to elaborate, the angel had disappeared, and Marisa knew they were alone.

The sound of screams from nearby shocked her into movement, and she ducked back through the window into their new world. Stelmaria was still lazing on Asriel’s chest, the man’s hand resting on her back, his fingers twitching as if he was trying to grasp her fur in his fist.

Marisa came to kneel beside them. “Stelmaria,” she said, and the leopard looked up at her with dazed eyes. “I need you to remember this window. Pick up the scent of this spot.”

Stelmaria closed her lids and did not move. Marisa sighed. “Useless,” she muttered to the monkey, who was shivering beside her and surveying their lovers with solemn eyes.

“They’re injured,” he said, reaching out to stroke the snow leopard.

“So are _we_ ,” she reminded him. She looked around. “We’ll just have to remember it, then. Come on.”

They lined themselves up with the mountains in the distance, the nearby tropical forest, the shimmery lake. The window was oriented so that it transferred from one great plain to another, which made it easy to identify given one world contained a great war, the sky a burning crimson, but would be a much bigger challenge when the fighting ceased.

When they’d done all the mapping possible in their current state, Marisa and the monkey coaxed and carried Asriel and Stelmaria towards the forest, each step so arduous that she did not have the energy to note the new life around her, did not see that this was a forest of trees where each leaf had regular sections cut from it, creating a serene dappling effect, nor that the snakes wrapped around the higher branches appeared to be encrusted with jewels. A bird flew overhead, enormous, like an eagle, but its wings were varying shades of blue, azure and cyan and teal, and when it dived into the lake its feathers were displaced to reveal gills, and the bird hunted below the surface for several minutes before surfacing with a double-headed eel in its beak. Engrossed in the task of transporting Asriel’s weakening body with only one arm of her own in use, Marisa saw none of this. But that was alright; there would be plenty of time for exploration later.

They were almost at the shores of the lake when Asriel let out a pained groan and started to retch. Marisa turned his head away fast enough that most of the vomit landed on the grass and himself instead of her, but her boots still ended up spattered with the vile fluid. Marisa grimaced at the monkey, and looked back towards the window. Death would certainly be cleaner.

“Ugh,” she groaned, wiping the leather of her shoes against the grass. Sweat was beading on her forehead; she was not dressed for a climate like this. She looked at Asriel, drool hanging down his chin, and raised an eyebrow. “Was that really necessary?”

He returned her glare with vacant eyes, and her irritation was immediately replaced by fear. She glanced back towards the window again.

“It’s not much further to the lake,” the monkey said, having scampered ahead to note the rest of the route. “The trees open out, there’s flat ground, and water.”

They reached the shore not long after, the lake clear and brilliant and turquoise, and the sandy bank a bright white. They were obscured by the trees that surrounded much of the water, and Marisa was relieved to see that most of the boughs were dotted with fruit. She imagined slipping into the waves, washing the blood and filth from her body, and gulping down the cool liquid until she could imbibe no more. Then she would gorge herself on the sweet fruit, lie back in the sun, and sleep. She sighed.

The monkey began to chitter as Stelmaria collapsed on the ground. Asriel whined against her, and she brought her hand up to stroke his back. “We’re here,” she said, setting him down against a tree. “No more walking.”

With the monkey’s help, Stelmaria dragged herself to Asriel’s side, falling to the ground again. The monkey placed Stelmaria’s head on Asriel’s thigh, and Marisa placed his hand on the snow leopard’s head.

She sat beside him, the monkey crawling into her own lap, and pushed his hair back from his face. His collar was soaked with blood, his cheeks sallow, the dirt and gore on his face cut only by tear trails, his eyes still leaking moisture. He was breathing heavily, wincing with every breath, his eyes glazed.

“Can you hear me?” she said softly, almost without meaning to. “Asriel?”

He nodded slightly, closing his eyes.

Marisa looked down to the ground, tears welling up. She could hear Asriel’s laboured breaths, the water lapping against the sand, and the creaks and twitters of the forest, but compared to the deafening roar of the battle, it felt like silence.

She looked at the monkey. “What are we to do now?” she whispered, a tear sliding down her cheek.

Before her dæmon could answer, Asriel’s hand began to bat around on the ground. She took it in hers, expecting him to squeeze it, but instead he brought her trembling fingers to his face. He pressed her knuckles to his bloodstained lips, rubbing her hand across his muzzle, and she bowed her head and wept.

It was nightfall not long after, the forest springing to life with croaks and rustles and clicks. Glowing insects skittered over the surface of the lake, like someone had dipped their brush into pools of light and begun to paint. The air stayed warm, and dry, which was a blessing, as they had no shelter.

She’d considered undressing, washing herself, picking fruit, but the monkey had urged her to wait until they’d gathered Xaphania’s supplies. “We need to rest,” he’d whined. “Perhaps she’ll bring medicine, or food we don’t have to climb for… Let’s not be hasty.”

She’d begrudgingly agreed, not wanting to stay in her soiled clothes and cloying boots but aware that wriggling out of them with her useless limb was a task she only wanted to do once. Asriel had fallen asleep soon after they’d arrived, his pained wheezes making clear that he was still alive and breathing, and Marisa had soon found herself overcome with exhaustion too, laying back gently onto the soft grass and lulled to sleep by the waves.

She woke up in the dark, the monkey blearily rubbing his eyes beside her, and looked back to the plain. “If we leave now, we’ll be back by morning,” she said, and the monkey nodded.

They both looked to their lovers. “Let’s not wake them,” she said, then let out a low moan as she clambered to her feet, her stiff shoulder throbbing.

“But if they _do_ wake up, they might think we’ve left them…”

“And they’ll realise their mistake when we return not long after,” Marisa said, through gritted teeth. Her stomach growled. “Fetch me something to eat, would you?”

The monkey obliged, squalling a little as his own arm twinged while he climbed, and presented a soft orange fruit to Marisa. She studied it, squinting in the darkness, and then took a dainty bite. It tasted like an orange and a pineapple had mated, and stolen the skin of a peach. She sighed contentedly, tore off another chunk of the fruit and started to limp back through the forest, her dæmon padding beside her.

Marisa had worried about finding her way in the darkness, but it turned out that the moon in this world was three times the size of any moon she’d ever seen, and lit her way better than any lantern. She picked her way through the trees and over the plains under the gentle silver light, until she saw the glistening air, and heard the faint pop of gunfire.

When she arrived back at the window, there were a few dark shapes beside the shimmer. Her shoulder was frozen and screaming by now, and so Marisa instructed the monkey to unclip the box’s latch and unbuckle the clasp of the canvas pack. “Is this it, do you think?” she said, looking over the paltry supplies with dismay.

“There’s another bag behind the trunk,” the monkey said, passing the pouch over to her.

She loosened the drawstring with one hand and nodded at the mass of bloodmoss inside. “What’s in the other cases?”

The monkey opened the canvas bag to reveal knives, flint, flasks, some loose clothes and various ointments and gauze. Marisa also saw a notebook and pencils tucked in the back, and smiled. The bigger trunk, leather with thick gold buckles, contained a robust canvas sheet, wooden poles, and some softer layers. A tent, with blankets, and a bedroll.

“Do you think we can carry all this?” she asked, eyeing the heavy trunk with trepidation.

“We have to,” the monkey said, slinging the pouch of bloodmoss onto his back and buckling the bag’s clasp. Marisa swung the canvas bag onto her good shoulder, her teeth gritted, and then crouched down to pick up the leather trunk with the same arm’s hand. The weight almost made her topple over, and as she stumbled, she felt the skin of her shoulder stretch. The pain was white-hot, and she cried out.

She cried all the way back to their sparse camp, each step excruciating, her feet sweaty and blistered in her boots, her torso frozen and throbbing, her eyes swollen. The monkey did his best to coax her forward, but after one well-meaning nudge too far she let out a wild screech, disturbing a flock of birds in a nearby tree, and dropped the supplies to the ground and fell to her knees.

The monkey climbed into her lap and placed one hand on each shoulder, careful not to jar the injured limb.

“We should have died,” she cried. “We should have fallen into the abyss and been obliterated.”

He stroked her tangled, coarse hair with his little black hand. “It’s not much further now. And then we can sleep, and then – ”

“And _then?”_ she said. “And then we shall wake in this strange new world, our only company a dying, drooling, useless man, who may never be well again – ” She gasped and pressed her hand over her mouth, the tears on her face glinting in the moonlight, as if her cheeks were decorated with silver charms.

“Hush now, Marisa,” the monkey said, curling into her and placing his hand over her heart. “If he does not recover, we can always cross back without him.”

That thought placated her somewhat, and she bent her head so that her dæmon could wipe her tears.

“And what of us?” she whimpered. “Can you reset bone? Could you bear it?”

“I will, for you,” he said, and pressed his face into her shivering breast. “We have bloodmoss, we have bandages, we have water and shelter. It’s not over yet.”

She sniffed. “I suppose.”

By the time they reached the clearing again, the sky was alive with stars. Marisa dropped the bags with a thud and stood there, aching and weeping and drained, and tilted her head back with a wince. She took deep, gasping breaths, like a fish pulled from the ocean, and tried to surrender to the expanse above her. She let her eyes flit from star to star, her tears blurring the scene into a sparkling sea, and thought of the other worlds layered upon this one, in which other people were looking up at other stars and other moons, and begging for conviction, just as she was. She sunk to her knees, the cool night air ruffling her hair.

She knew that she should dress Asriel’s head and clean her own wounds before succumbing to sleep, but within seconds the sky has begun to ripple and pulse as if it were a dissipating hallucination, and Marisa knew that she could do no more for either of them before the dawn broke. With her last conscious thoughts, Marisa crawled across the ground, pulled a blanket from the trunk and laid her head down beneath the stars, drifting off into a fitful sleep beside her wounded lover, her dæmon curled into her breast, the pair of them breathing as one.

She woke with the sun not long after, the air already warm enough to cause sweat to bead on her brow. Nudging the monkey from her, she gestured to her boots, and her dæmon dutifully scampered down to her feet to unlace the shoes and wrangle the thick leather from her legs. He pulled off her long socks too, the cream wool now discoloured by sweat and stained with blood from her blisters.

Marisa sank her bare feet into the grass as she looked out over the lake, the dew soothing her aching arches better than any healing balm. Before she turned to Asriel, she looked for Stelmaria; his dæmon was a better guide to his vitality than his ashen face. The leopard was lounging across Asriel’s lap, the man himself still propped against the tree and pale like a corpse.

“Where shall we start?” she said to the golden monkey, her eyes darting from Asriel’s bloody neck to his contorted, swollen hand to the gash across his cheek.

“His head, then you, then the rest of him,” the monkey said, as if he’d been considering the question all night.

She nodded, and approached her lover cautiously. “Asriel,” she murmured, channelling as much lightness into her tone as her vocal cords could muster. She stroked his cheek, and squeezed his good hand. Stelmaria’s eyes drifted open.

“I have bloodmoss,” she said to the snow leopard. Stelmaria closed her eyes.

Marisa huffed. “They will be no help, I see,” she muttered, as the monkey nudged Stelmaria away from Asriel’s thigh so Marisa could lay his head in her lap. She managed to roll him onto his side, resting on the arm that didn’t end in a broken hand, and turn the back of his head to the sky. His lips and nose were pressed into her bare calf, and she felt his breath against her skin. She bent down and pressed a kiss to his crown, pausing as she tasted blood, and then slowly licked her lips clean.

The golden monkey had already placed the bag of bloodmoss beside her and undone the drawstring, as well as unbuckling the canvas and laying the gauze, other ointments and small roll of tools by her side. “Fill the flask from the lake,” she instructed, and he was back in a moment, eyes determined and hands primed as he waited for his next instruction.

Marisa drunk half of the flask’s contents and poured the rest over Asriel’s head, the bloody water dripping from his scalp to her clothes. He moaned. “Ssh,” she said absentmindedly, smoothing his hair, feeling for debris, trying to locate the wound.

His dark hair was tangled and matted with blood, so much so that she could hardly find his skull beneath it. “Pass me the scissors,” she ordered, and the monkey placed the cool blades in her hand.

She hacked at his hair, cutting off knot after knot, her lap soon reminiscent of an oddly brutal barbershop. She only had one functioning hand, so the monkey would hold out the offending curl and she would snip it with glee before pointing to the next patch. By the time Asriel’s head was a mess of tufts, the wound came into sight, and Marisa winced. It was a sharp gash across the back of his skull, his occipital bone exposed, likely fractured. She blew out a slow breath.

“Refill the flask,” she said, and then poured more water over his head, wincing as he convulsed in her lap.

She began to tweeze out rock and dirt and bark, the edges of the gash already reddening with the tease of infection. She worked slowly and methodically, removing each speck of debris with the utmost care, Asriel twitching and grunting, half-conscious. Stelmaria had tried to watch her, teeth bared from the first deep probe, but the leopard was soon lolling on the floor again, her drool mixing with the morning dew.

“He will owe us his life,” the monkey said, holding Asriel’s torn skin steady so Marisa could grasp a deep shard of rock.

The corner of Marisa’s lip quirked up. “He will, won’t he?”

The stitches were a great challenge with only one hand, but with the bone exposed, she could not chance leaving the wound for much longer. The saving grace of the situation was that Asriel had fallen unconscious, lying still as a stone while she knotted his jagged skin together, the monkey pressing the two halves of his scalp against each other as she slotted the needle through his flesh. Once the wound was clean and haphazardly repaired, Marisa packed it with bloodmoss and wrapped his head in gauze, rubbing his arm again as he began to moan. She supported his neck while the monkey tipped the flask to his mouth, his wide throat gulping the fresh water eagerly. He drained the entire flask in less than a minute and Marisa sent the monkey back for more. After he’d been hydrated, she rolled him onto her makeshift pillow from the night before, laying his head down gently, like one might place a baby in a bassinet, and was shocked to see his eyes open. They were still blood red, and at first glance, they frightened her, his demonic gaze incongruous with the serenity of their surroundings.

“Your wound is clean,” she said. “I’ve dressed it with bloodmoss and bandaged your head. You need to rest now, my love. I will tend to your other injuries later.”

He opened his mouth, rasping. “M – m – ”

“Ssh,” she said, shaking her head. “My darling, you need to rest, if you are to heal. Go back to sleep.” 

He clenched his unbroken hand into a fist, his lips smacking together.

“I know it’s frustrating,” she cooed, his impotence perversely delicious. “But you have to trust me. Have I not earned that, by now?”

Despite his impairments, he still managed to glare at her. She smiled. “Asriel, please, I’m begging you to rest.”

His eyes were still darting around, and his legs were twitching. She picked up his hand and pressed it to her heart. He stilled, the steady beats thumping against his palm.

“Do you want to wake tomorrow and find my heart silent and still?”

He grunted, his head twitching briefly, a faint shake. He grasped her chest more tightly.

“I thought not. Please, my love, don’t inflict a grief upon me that you would not inflict upon yourself.”

He huffed, but closed his eyes, his hand only loosening its grip on her shirt when he’d fallen back to sleep. 

Her shoulder pain had numbed to a dull ache, but it began to throb and pulse as soon as the monkey tugged at her sleeve. “I know,” she snapped. “Help me get this off.”

Her dæmon undid her buttons as deftly as he could manage, his own left arm and hand weakened too. Her blouse had originally been a delicate cream cotton, imported from Italia, though now it was torn and stained. The buttons at the neck were largely decorative; the item had to be removed over her head.

With the monkey’s help, she tried to lift the hem of the shirt, but her shoulder would not cooperate at all. She cried out as she tried to lift her arm, pain ploughing across her torso like wildfire. Her dæmon fetched the scissors.

“No,” she said, panting. “Oh, don’t.”

The monkey rolled his eyes. “You're ridiculous." 

“This was expensive, and who knows what that angel brought us?”

He shook his head. “If Asriel has to rest, then you have to let me cut this shirt.”

She reached over to Asriel’s sleeping body, her hand contorted as if she was about to pinch the skin of his wrist. The monkey poked her injured shoulder, and she withdrew her hand to clasp the battered limb immediately, glaring at him as she groaned. He held up the scissors again, snipping at the air.

“You’re a menace,” she said, though she allowed him to shear away her sleeve.

Once the blouse was suitably snipped, he peeled off the fabric to reveal her torso. His little eyes began to water. Her shoulder joint looked almost square, the arm clearly dangling out of its socket, and the whole area was splotched with bruises, deep purple edged with green and yellow, as if someone had sketched the Aurora across her chest with cursed paint. The swelling and bruises were especially prominent at her collarbone, which looked and felt broken. Marisa looked down and inhaled sharply.

“Oh dear,” she said, surveying the damage. She’d adjusted to the pain enough that it almost felt like she was back in Bolvangar, examining a screaming child through a glass window. She saw the cuts, the bruises, the torn skin, the useless limb, but could scarcely believe it was her own body before her.

“You’ll have to reset it,” she said to the monkey, who was trembling. “The shoulder and the bone.”

He nodded bravely. “You should wash first, though. Then we can sling it up after…” He swallowed. “After.” 

With her dæmon’s unwavering help, Marisa was able to remove her slacks and undergarments, pad down to the sand and enter the water. She braced herself for a cold sting, but the water was warm, almost like a tepid bath. The monkey was sitting at the shoreline, waiting to clean her nails and detangle her hair, but Marisa couldn’t resist walking out a few steps further, her shoulder supported by the water, her eyes marvelling at the trees, the colourful birds, the water so clear she could see her feet in the sand below. To her surprise, she felt her eyes fill with tears, and then she ducked briefly beneath the water to wash them away.

She perched in the shallows, the sun drying her shoulders in minutes, the monkey using the rags of her shirt to clean the blood and dirt from her hands. “Wade out and turn around,” he said, and then began to unravel the worst knots in her hair with his hand as she floated in the tranquil pool.

Then came the unpleasant task of resetting her collarbone and relocating her shoulder. It took a long time, because each of the monkey’s attempts to truly wrench the limb resulted in him collapsing on the grass himself, howling. Asriel stirred when this first occurred, so Marisa and the golden monkey walked a little way into the trees, and screeched in private. She’d found sticks for both his mouth and hers, and the two of them howled into the wood, the sharp points of their teeth bearing down on the twigs until they snapped.

The shoulder was slotted back in first, to much fanfare, and the reset collarbone followed, the jagged bone shoved back into the monkey’s best guess at its correct alignment. By the end, Marisa’s body was wracked with silent sobs, and the monkey was trembling so violently that he could hardly continue.

“I’m sorry,” he howled, crawling into her lap as she flexed her quivering fingers.

“It’s alright,” she said, her chest heaving, kissing his fur. “Let’s just – oh – let’s just make a sling quickly, hmm?”

Back at their meagre camp, the monkey found a thin sheet in the tent trunk and fashioned it into a sling, tying it around Marisa’s torso with aplomb. Her shoulder hurt, of course, more so than it had done when it was injured but untampered with, but she could move it now, and her hand too, and the relief of that was enough to dull the pain for the time being.

“What if I haven’t set it properly?” the monkey said, eyeing the bruised skin. She’d found a linen skirt in the canvas pack and slipped it on, but left her chest uncovered, because it was warm and she was hurt and there was no one around to see, anyway.

“Then you’ll have to break it again and have another go,” she said, and he shuddered.

“Don’t, Marisa.”

She ran her fingers over his golden fur. “Pass me the bloodmoss,” she said. “And fetch me some fruit from the trees, would you?”

Her dæmon obliged with haste, peeling the various fruits and feeding her by hand as she drew the bloodmoss over her other scrapes and cuts and dressed them accordingly.

They marvelled at the new tastes and sensations. “It’s blue!” the monkey said, slicing through one capsule’s soft brown shell and revealing the supple pulp inside.

He placed a piece on her tongue. She scrunched her eyes as she chewed and swallowed it. “Sour,” she wheezed, and the monkey cackled. She finished another of the sweet, tropical fruits that she’d tried the night before, and then settled down beside Asriel on the soft grass, and fell asleep in the sun.

As the days melted into weeks and the weeks into months, the pair slowly crawled back towards vitality. At first, they both slept for long hours, rest the only thing that seemed to heal their wounds. Marisa used her few good hours of energy each day to drink water and feed them both food, mostly fruit, and some dried meat jerky that Xaphania had slotted into her package. She would also clean their cuts, carefully redress Asriel’s headwound, stretch her tender shoulder and stare at the landscape, unblinking, her eyes filled with tears.

She had intended to count the days, but in the haze of pain and injury and shock she’d lost track within the week. Her watch continued to work, but it soon became clear that the days in this world were slightly shorter than the days she was accustomed to, and upon that discovery the watch was rendered useless. She rose with the sun and settled with the darkness, and that had to be enough.

After some time, her arm healing, her waking hours increasing, she and the monkey turned themselves to the great tent. This world was warm, even through the night, and they’d simply been sleeping on the open grass for weeks, laid on Xaphania’s bedroll and blankets under the stars. But they worried of a rainstorm, a winter, a predator, and as her injuries healed her focus sharpened accordingly. It took a week to erect the tent, Marisa’s shoulder still greatly impaired, the monkey hauling the top into the trees and attaching it to a branch before they laid out the canvas base and hammered the tent poles into the ground.

Then she began to explore, walking into the forest and gathering leaves and nuts and insects for her to sketch and then dismantle. Xaphania had provided them with two thick notebooks, and it was that for which Marisa was most grateful, after the bloodmoss and the other healing ointments. The monkey made his own entertainment, too; he found creatures under logs, in the trees, and would chase them around their camp until they were bleating in distress. Then he’d pull them apart and deliver them to Marisa for examination.

The weeks wended on: Marisa’s shoulder strengthened, her collarbone healed, her bruises faded. Her notebook started to fill with sketches and notes from their new world, she figured out which fruits were bitter, and which were sweet, and discovered streams and waterfalls and caves. She would sit beside Asriel as she wrote and drew, showing him her specimens, hoping to see his eyes light up at the sight of the panelled leaves or iridescent spiders. Sometimes, the glint of curiosity was there, and other days, his stare remained bland and vacant, his expression utterly lost when she asked him his name. It was those days that she’d sit out late beneath the stars, staring into the distance, imagining the window and the other worlds it contained, itching to run and never look back.

He slept for so many hours for so many days. His head wound healed well, but that brought new, deeper fears: that whatever damage had been done was permanent, that his fire and vigour had been extinguished, that the man she loved, who she’d run from and run to and been prepared to die with, was gone forever, and she was tasked to care for his shell, or leave him here to perish.

Flashes of him would appear, intermittently enough that it made her skittish, like a rat in a maze who doesn’t know whether a delicacy will be delivered or not. He would hold a beetle up to the light, grasped between his thumb and forefinger, and point out a marking she’d missed, or she’d return from a walk to see him attempting to peel fruit for the both of them, or she’d wake up in the night and find him watching her, the look of love on his face so deep and wide that it made her nauseous.

It was these moments that stopped her from leaving – or at least, that was what she told herself. The monkey would scoff as soon as thoughts of escape entered her mind. “You can still hardly move that arm,” he would say, “and you certainly can’t lift things or climb or fight. You still sleep long hours too, you know, and we have no weapons, and no idea what the world is like now on the other side of that window. And…”

He would tail off then, but they both knew how the sentence would end: _...and Asriel would die._

His words still sparse, Asriel made his feelings known by touch. He would take her hand and bring it to lips, brush her hair from her face, hold her to his chest as they lay in their tent at night. He’d occasionally say her name, ask for water, and request bloodmoss when its analgesic properties subsided and his battered skull began to ache. After many weeks, he’d share short sentences, or offer his advice on her notes. It was those moments that made her the most conflicted. “Marisa,” he would say, squeezing her hand as she knelt by his side and wound a fresh sheet of gauze around a gash on his upper arm, discovered the first time she’d undressed him in their new world and paled at the extent of his injuries. He would say her name, grasp her fingers, and look into her eyes, and she would feel weak, and resolve to stay, and hope and beg and pray to the Authority they had killed that Asriel’s flame would reignite.

Months must have passed by the time she woke up to find him gone, his space on their makeshift mattress empty for the first time since she’d deposited him there so long ago. Her eyes snapped open and the monkey started to chitter. She almost tripped as she scrambled to her feet, her shoulder still immobilised in the sling, as it continued to be every night. “Asriel?” she called out breathlessly.

He’d hardly walked in months, but she’d seen no predators in all the time they’d been recuperating by the lake. She burst through the doors of the tent, her heart pounding, expecting to see a trail of blood, his body torn open, something deeply, distressingly wrong.

Instead she found him standing by the water, one of their flasks in his hand, wearing the pair of linen trousers Xaphania had packed for him and nothing else. He was looking out over the lake, grinning at the birds wheeling above him, his fingers playing with Stelmaria’s ears.

She stood on the grass, still, cautious. “Asriel?”

He turned his head to look at her, and beamed. “Good morning. This place is quite beautiful, isn’t it?”

She stared at him. He turned back towards the lake and took a swig from the flask, gulping so hungrily that water trickled down onto his chest. “How long have we been here?”

Her nostrils flared. “You _bastard_ ,” she said, and stormed back into the tent, the monkey left to stare delightedly at the man and his dæmon.

Stelmaria reached her first, Asriel’s steps still slow and deliberate. Marisa was pacing, wishing she’d stalked into the trees rather than the canvas enclosure; in an open space, she could definitely outrun him. The snow leopard padded over to her without hesitation, and nuzzled her head against Marisa’s knee.

“Marisa, my love.” He was standing in the doorway, one hand braced against the rolled-back canvas for support. It was the hand that had been broken, that she’d splinted and washed and soothed, and here he was, using the formerly fractured digits to keep himself upright, looking upon her with adoration. She shook her head and turned away.

She heard Asriel lumber over, his steps heavy compared to the lithe grace with which he used to move, while Stelmaria slunk between her legs, her fur swishing across Marisa’s calves. She could feel his heat before he touched her, his skin warm from the sun, gloriously, wonderfully vital. He folded an arm around her, careful not to jar her shoulder, and pressed a kiss to her bare neck.

“Thank you.”

She let out a ragged breath. He squeezed her tighter.

“You’re not in pain?” she asked softly.

“No.”

She found that hard to believe, so twisted in his arms and ran her fingers over his skull. He winced. “Liar,” she said.

“It’s mild enough to think straight.”

She extricated herself from his arms to fetch the bloodmoss pouch. “Come here,” she said, then wandered out into the sun and sat on the small ledge where the grass faded into the sand. He settled between her legs without being asked and tilted his head forward. She drew the bloodmoss over the scar, then pressed the same piece into the rest of his skull and neck, soaking his hair.

“Do you do this every morning?” he asked, his hand stroking her calf.

“Yes,” she said, dotting his neck with the analgesic. “Every evening too.”

She felt him smile. “That’s very doting of you.”

“You’d be dead if I hadn’t.”

“I know. Thank you, Marisa.” 

She tensed. “Don’t patronise me.”

He laughed. “Would you rather I ignored your selfless devotion?” She slapped his head, and he yelped. “I might still have a cracked skull, you know.”

“I can only hope.”

He drew his thumbnail up her calf, and she twitched. “You don’t mean that, or else you’d have let me suffer and die. You can’t lie about it anymore. You don’t want to live without me.”

She raised her hand again, and he winced, still smiling. Then she let her hand fall and bent down to kiss his hair. “You really feel well?” she asked.

He nodded. “I do.”

She bowed her head. He looked up her, the curtain of her hair tickling his chin, and saw that both her eyes and lips were pressed closed. “Look at me,” he said, reaching up to stroke her face.

She opened her eyes, and they were glistening. He turned around, sat up on his knees and placed both of his palms on her cheeks. He stroked his thumbs across the soft skin of her face, looking into her eyes as they watered until she had no choice but to blink, her tears moistening the tips of his fingers. “My love,” he said, and kissed her.

At first, his touch was featherlight, his lips just barely grazing hers. Then his tongue began to probe at the seam of her mouth, and she parted her lips and let him in, reaching up and placing her hands on his forearms as his thumbs continued to stroke her damp cheeks. The kiss wasn’t urgent, or painful, or cruel; it was soaked in love, in the optimistic exhaustion of two wearied people who know that they will share plenty of kisses in the future.

When she pulled away, she could see his eyes already drifting shut. “You should lie down,” she said, raising an eyebrow as soon as he opened his mouth to protest. “I’ll lie with you,” she offered, and that was enough for him to nod. 

Stelmaria dragged a blanket outside and they lay on it together, a pair of vivid blue butterflies darting around in the air above them, Asriel’s fingers lightly carding through her hair. “Where _are_ we?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” she admitted.

“That’s unlike you.”

“It’s another world. I know very little about it.”

“How long have we been here?”

She started to relax into him. “Months, I suppose. It must be.”

He nodded. “I see.”

“You don’t remember anything?”

“I have snippets,” he said. “Mostly of your face.”

“That’s it?” She sat up, stricken, oblivious to his sweetness.

“Perhaps a little more than that,” he said, coaxing her back into his arms. “You have a notebook, I think. I remember your sketches.”

She nodded. “That’s right.”

“There are a few more moments, but it’s a blur. I doubt I was doing much of interest.”

“You were not,” she said. “You were either sleeping or groaning or drooling. It was exceedingly tiresome.”

“I’m sorry that I sustained a brain injury, darling. Next time we fight God, I’ll try to keep my skull out of arm’s reach.”

She sat up again, and he let her go. “You remember the fight?”

“Flashes of it. Given that we are both still here, I assume that we triumphed.”

She nodded. “Stelmaria tore out his throat, and we pushed him into the abyss. He was annihilated.”

Asriel’s face radiated joy. “Excellent. That’s excellent.” He met her eyes. “And then what happened?”

She recounted their journey to the window, Xaphania’s advice, their trek to this spot among the trees. She emphasised his complete uselessness at every opportunity, but her obvious barbs only made him smile.

“And Xaphania constructed this for us?” he said, nodding to the tent. “That was generous of her.”

Marisa shook her head. “She didn’t cross through with us.”

He frowned. “Then who put this up?”

“I did, you imbecile. _We_ did.” She looked to the monkey, who was being fawned over by Stelmaria. 

Asriel blinked as he looked at her shoulder, which was still in its sling. 

“Not all of us had the luxury of sleeping for several months to recover from our injuries,” she said primly, turning to look out over the lake.

There was a pause, the only sound the twinkling of the water. “Let me see your shoulder,” he said.

“It’s fine.”

“ _Marisa_.”

She relented, untying the sling and exposing the limb. “I hardly wear the sling anymore,” she said, shivering as his fingers skated over her collarbone and shoulder. “Only at night. It’s fine, Asriel, really – oh!”

She jerked away from him as he pressed against a sensitive spot. “There’s a lot of scar tissue,” he said, examining the area like she was a specimen he’d found in the forest. “Can you lift your arm?”

“Of course I can,” she snapped.

He leaned back and gestured to her. “Go on, then.”

She was able to lift her elbow until it was perpendicular to her shoulder, the two joints forming a line in the air, but as she tried to lift her arm beyond that point Asriel watched her face drain of its colour, her eye twitching. He lifted his eyebrow, suppressing a smirk, watching her prolong her suffering rather than admit she was in pain.

“Ugh,” she groaned eventually, dropping her hand back to the ground and rubbing at the damaged limb.

Asriel returned his hand to the area and began to knead the knots of the scar tissue. She hissed, but didn’t flee. “Your collarbone was broken,” he stated.

She nodded. “Yes. My shoulder was dislocated too.”

He lifted her hand and began to roll her arm in the joint, watching as she winced again. “Whoever fixed this did a terrible job,” he smirked, and the monkey growled.

She glared at Asriel and snatched her arm back. “We did our best. I wonder how well you’d have fared if you’d had to stitch your own scalp.”

Asriel moved to sit behind her, then pushed her hair over her opposite shoulder and started to massage the knotted tissue. She anticipated pain, but his touch was gentle, and as he worked at the scarred flesh she found herself moaning. She felt his smile.

Eventually she shrugged him off, nudged him down onto the blanket and curled into his side. “You’ll forget this too, won’t you?” she said.

He was looking up at the sky, his eyes locked on the coiled clouds. He blinked, as if he’d seen them before, a long time ago. “I don’t think so,” he said with a smile.

She didn’t believe him. She’d expected him to be mute for days after that morning, a burst of lucidity before he sunk back into his stupor, but to her great surprise he woke again the next day, and the next, and the day after that too. He still slept for long hours at night, often asleep before sunset and awake long after dawn, and he whiled away the afternoons by dozing, but in his waking hours he was passionate and insightful and affectionate, as if he was restored.

He began to join her as she padded through the forest, as she sent the monkey to pick fruit from the trees, as she swam in the lake under the blazing sun. She showed him the waterfalls she’d discovered and he stood beneath the pounding streams and laughed. He soon began to tire of fruit being the basis of their diet and whittled himself a fishing rod, using a vine as a line and carving a stone into a hook. The monkey sourced some worms for him from the soil, and he pulled a rainbow fish from the lake not long after, and they grilled it on a fire they’d built and fed each other the fish’s supple flesh and kissed beneath the stars.

Without words for so long, she’d become accustomed to his hand reaching for hers, to him holding her to his chest in the night, to his fingertips dancing up her calf as she roused for the day and he was bound to their makeshift bed. As his faculties returned and he strengthened, Asriel’s gentle touches morphed into something decidedly more familiar: he would grip her cheeks in both palms and kiss her so hard that her lips would throb; he’d wrap his arms around her from behind and squeeze her until she pushed him away; he’d bite and scratch and paw at her skin as he laid her on the sand and they made love.

The first time had taken her by surprise. There’d been a time when they couldn’t even be in the same building without seeking each other out, as if the other’s very presence altered the composition of the air, the pheromones flying through the vents like poison gas. It felt like two magnets being hurled together, crashing through walls, tearing things apart so that they could be pressed against each other once more. But after so many months of lying beside a husk in the shape of the only man who’d ever even tried to truly see her, she found herself hesitant, unable to believe that she wouldn’t be jolted awake, bruised and deformed and laid out beside Asriel’s corpse, their survival and this new world nothing but a fever dream.

It took him time too, for reasons that were largely more physiological. For weeks, he seemed content to caress her, to hold her, to massage the knots in her scar tissue, as if he didn’t know there was greater intimacy that could be shared between them, every inch of his brainpower funnelled into his healing, no space for anything else.

She remembered the moment the switch was flipped. The sun was shining down on them with a rage, not a spiral cloud in the perfect blue sky, and they were perched on the sand, examining the carcass of a vibrant red tree frog that Asriel had clobbered that morning while he was picking their breakfast. They were chewing on nuts while they did so, Stelmaria cracking the hard outer shells in her strong jaws and the monkey freeing the blanched white kernels inside. Asriel was sketching the frog’s organs while Marisa was using their knife and needles to dissect the colourful corpse.

“Four kidneys,” she mumbled, a spare needle clasped between her teeth, her fingers smeared with the frog’s blood.

Asriel leaned down and squinted at the tiny purple globules. “Hmm,” he said, stretching his open palm out towards the monkey and throwing another nut into his mouth without taking his eyes off the freshly excised structures.

“But no additional lungs, hearts, intestines,” she said, surveying the rest of the frog’s tissues, neatly laid out on wide flat leaves. “Why?”

They tossed theories around for a while longer, Asriel sharpening the pencil with the knife as he scrawled their thoughts next to his drawing. By the time their discussion veered from the unlikely to the insane, he closed the sketchbook and wiped his hand across his damp brow. “Good.” He looked to the sky. “It’s damn hot here.”

She nodded. “It’s cooler in the tent. Let’s go back inside.”

He shook his head. “There’s a faster way to cool off,” he said, pushing himself to his feet in one swift move. Marisa blinked; she’d become accustomed to seeing him stumble, but everything about his rise was graceful. He held out his hand. “Come on.”

“Where are we going?”

He unbuttoned his linen trousers and dropped them to the ground, then ploughed into the lake with a grin.

He let out a deep groan of relief as he submerged himself, laughing as he tore back through the surface, sending droplets shattering like shards of glass. “Come in here, Marisa! It’s wonderful.”

She stood, the water lapping against her bare toes. Marisa marvelled at his hulking shoulders, the strong kick of his legs, the vibrancy in every sinew of his being. He swam back to her and strode onto the shore, stopping in front of her, panting. “Take off your clothes.”

The words were like an enchantment, a potion wafted beneath the nose of a sleeping princess, reminding her that is she alive, breathing, vital. They both straightened their backs, their eyes roving over the other’s sunkissed body, as if only just remembering that before they’d become adversaries and invalids and exiles, they’d been lovers. Marisa held his gaze as she unbuttoned the olive cotton dress and let it fall to the ground in a heap. They stood bare before each other, Marisa’s chest flushed in the heat, Asriel’s body dripping water onto the sand. “Come here,” he said, softer now, and pulled her into the lake.

The water was cool, cleansing, fresh. She dove beneath the surface, soaking her hair and face, and when she reappeared she found herself flowing into Asriel’s arms, hooking her ankles around his back and finding his lips with an urgency. He held her by the underside of her thighs, though the water made her deliciously buoyant, weightless, almost, and their tongues entwined, their breathing quickened, they clutched each other closer, as if they were each the other’s raft in a swirling storm.

They stumbled back to the shore, Asriel taking her weight as the water slipped away, and then they lay down together on the sand and moved as one, with the trees and the birds and their souls bearing witness to their recoupling.

The dam had broken, flooding the town, the country, the whole damn world. They rutted like animals: against trees, on the dewy grass as the sun rose, on their small beach under the stars, the sand grazing Marisa’s back with friction burns that would later have to be soothed by Stelmaria’s gentle tongue. They’d feed each other ripe fruit while he was inside her, Marisa perched on his lap, grinding against each other as they licked the sweet juices from each other’s chests, moaning, grinning, nourished.

They made love one morning in their tent, splayed out across the blankets, and then Asriel pressed a sloppy kiss to her collarbone and stood. “I’m going to check on the catch,” he said. He’d rigged up a cage out of wood, the funnels woven out of vines, and placed it in the lake, hoping to catch crustaceans of some kind, which they could examine and then devour. Marisa watched him move about the tent, her gaze roving over their notebooks, their sparse belongings, the tools they’d fashioned over the months they’d been living in this world. He fetched the knife, the pencil, and his notebook, not bothering to don a shred of clothing, then sunk his teeth into one of the plum-like fruits they had in a bowl he’d carved himself some weeks ago, and headed out. Marisa slipped on her dress and followed.

She watched him for a while, the monkey curled in her lap. Stelmaria was helping him drag the cage from the water, and as it came into view his spoils were clear to see. The cage was crawling with jet-black creatures with great claws, beady blue eyes and a mass of orange antennae. There were a few smaller animals too, more like crabs, red and pink and snapping. Asriel beamed at her, then set about liberating one of each of his new discoveries, before returning the cage to the water so the rest wouldn’t suffocate.

“Come and see!” he called to her, tracing his finger over the smooth shell of the black lobster.

She padded over. He looked like a child opening a gift, examining each creature, holding the crabs up to his face, squinting at their tiny pincers. “They have fewer legs than the crabs from our world,” he said, slipping the pencil behind his ear and driving the knife into the crab’s carapace.

He removed the plate from the crab’s exoskeleton and passed it to Marisa, who turned it over in her hands. “It’s too soft to be chitin,” she murmured, feeling the red shard bend. “Perhaps they don’t molt in this world. Perhaps they grow with their shells.”

Asriel nodded. “I can raise one in the cage. We can see.”

She studied him then, the glee on his face, his brown skin smooth, his muscles strong. He was naked but not exposed, utterly relaxed in the morning air of this new world, a natural part of its scenery. He turned back to his catch and she knelt down behind him to examine his scar. There was a thick band of flesh running across the back of his head where hair would never grow again, but the skin was strong now, the cells of his epidermis knotted back together, the rest of the bloodmoss relegated to its pouch should they need it in the future. She looked at the remnants of his wound as his mind thrummed with theories, the dexterity of his once-broken hand as he peeled back each layer of the crab, and the lucidity in his eyes as he fashioned tools, started experiments, built a life, and knew that he was well. Truly well. He was healed. They both were.

She blinked. “We can go back.”

He turned around, the knife in his teeth, his fingers buried in the crab. “What?” he mumbled against the blade.

“You are well, as am I. We can go back through the window.”

He let the knife fall to the ground. "What?" he said again.

“We’re both strong enough now, aren’t we? We can cross back, rejoin the fight, if it continues, or return to our world and share our story and find – ”

“Why would we do that?”

Her eyes widened. “We can’t stay _here_ forever.”

“Why not?”

Her heart began to race. “We don’t belong here, Asriel. It’s not our world. We might be the only two people in it!”

“So what?”

“You don’t care that we will never see another living soul again?”

His face unfurled into a smile. “We have each other.”

“Don’t be an idiot.”

“Marisa, we have a whole world to ourselves! A world filled to the brim with wonders of nature. Think about what we’ve already seen! There will be untold phenomena to discover. We have been given a _gift_.”

“We have been exiled!”

He wiped the crab’s entrails on his bare thighs and folded his arms. “If you insist on seeing it that way, I can’t help you.”

“You cannot be dense enough to consider banishment a _reward_. Perhaps you are not healed. Perhaps your brain is still damaged.”

“Excellent. Then we should stay.”

“ _No_.” She clambered to her feet and moved a few paces away, tears filling her eyes. He sighed.

“My love, I doubt that we can get back.”

She looked stricken. “Why?”

“That world is barren. I was guided to it by beings who are surely dead now. The landscape was scorched by the war, there may not be food, nor water. I travelled through many worlds to find that one, Marisa. It is a long way back to our world, and I don’t think I can guide us there.”

She narrowed her eyes. “You’re lying.”

“I am not,” he said, his face wide and open, and she knew it was the truth.

“Xaphania can help us, then. There will be _someone_. I don’t care how long it takes.”

“That world was empty when we arrived. I wouldn’t be surprised if it is empty again now.”

“The war might not even be finished, you know. It might still be populated by thousands. Perhaps your armies are waiting for you, eager for their next command.”

“I doubt that.”

She shook her head. “You were willing to die for your cause,” she said. “And now you are abandoning it.”

“I was _willing_ to die for it, yes,” he said. “I am not going to insist on it. And I am not _abandoning_ the war, Marisa. We won. We triumphed. It is done.”

“It wasn’t done when we crossed,” she said, sniffing. “The fighting continued in earnest. That’s why we had to escape, don’t you see? We’d have been killed.”

“The true war was over. Metatron was dead, and the Authority gone too, that’s what you told me you learned from Xaphania. It is _over_ , Marisa. Destiny is no more, and death is dead. There is nothing more for us to do. There is no higher goal to which I can devote myself.”

“What about our daughter?” she said, her voice trembling. “Does she know we survived? Does she know what we were prepared to do for her? She tore herself from her dæmon, journeyed to the world of the dead and lived to tell the tale. Don’t tell me you wouldn’t like to see her face just one more time, to see the girl without whom your divine war would have failed.”

“Lyra achieved great things, I am not disputing that. I am tremendously proud of her – I always have been, you know, a feeling that I understand is new for you – but she is not _ours_ , Marisa. She never has been.” He ran his hand through his hair. “She has also never struggled to find friends, and she has another task now: to build the republic of heaven, the same task we all have. She will be fine. And I highly doubt that she has any interest in being reunited with us. She evaded us both at every opportunity, don’t you forget.”

“She _is_ ours, Asriel. She is our child. We made her, together.”

He pinched the bridge of his nose between his thumb and forefinger. “ _Mother_ is your least compelling shade, you know.”

The monkey bared his teeth and screeched, and Marisa looked wounded and furious in equal measure. She picked up a rock and hurled it at him.

“I saved your life,” she spat as he leapt up to dodge the projectile. “I could have left you here to die.”

He held her gaze. “I know.”

“And yet you have no qualms about forcing me to do the same?”

He scoffed. “You will not die here, Marisa. Look at this world! It’s ripe with life. It is Dust manifested. And it is ours.”

She shook her head. “You are really not curious, about how the war ended? You are content to stay here, for the rest of our lives, not knowing?”

“I do know. Metatron perished. It will change all the worlds. I am sure of it.”

“But what if it doesn’t?” she cried. “What if they don’t know that…” She broke off and let out a ragged breath, tears spilling from her eyes. “…that God is dead, and Dust is _beautiful,_ and they should not be afraid?”

He could never resist her when she was like this: blazing before him, her chest heaving, her jaw rigid with determination. In the past, in moments like this, her eyes would only have swirled with malice; now, they were brimming with a violent sense of hope, and he knew that he was lost.

“I’m not staying here,” she said. “The world should know what we did, and we should find Lyra. I’ll do it alone if you won’t join me.”

She turned and stalked towards the tent.

“Alright.”

She stilled, and swivelled her head. “What?”

“Alright. We’ll go back.”

She held his gaze for a moment, then nodded. “Yes, we will.”

They stayed for another few days, packing their things, gathering food, dismantling the tent and folding the canvas back into the trunk, and then began to walk back towards the window. Asriel was eating one of the ripe orange fruits as he stalked across the lush plains, the juice dripping down his neck and staining his shirt. She saw him pulling at his collar and frowning, and offering his sticky fingers to Stelmaria to lick clean. “Stop fussing,” she said.

“I didn’t say a word,” he said petulantly, pulling at his buttons until his chest was exposed. It was the first time he’d worn a shirt in months, even loose linen.

They walked in silence for a while until Asriel dropped the trunk with a huff. “This is ridiculous, Marisa. We have a whole new world at our fingertips, and you want to return to a warzone to search for a child who doesn’t want to be found.”

“That’s right,” she said, without stopping.

“I wish I’d never impregnated you,” he called after her.

She whirled around and glared at him. “Then we’d all have been doomed, and your war would have been for nothing.”

They stared each other down for a moment, though Stelmaria padded over to the monkey and bent down so he could clamber onto her back. Asriel watched the exchange with a scowl, his true feelings exposed, and then he picked up the trunk and continued walking. She waited until he’d caught up with her and then started forward again too.

They forged on. “I just want to remind you that when _I_ wanted you to enter another world with me, you refused,” he said after a while, the monkey still atop his dæmon.

“Perhaps you’re fonder of me than I am of you, darling.”

“A lie,” he said. “You might have convinced me of that once, but not after _this_.” He gestured to the back of his head. “You’ve showed your hand, my love.”

“A decision I regret more and more with each day that passes.” He smirked, and she smiled back, and they continued to walk.

They emerged from the forest, crossed a stream Marisa could hardly remember from her pain-addled trips several months prior, and started to trek across the fields. After an hour, as if impeded by an invisible brick wall, Marisa came to an abrupt stop, her face pale.

Asriel didn’t notice for several metres, then turned around to face her. “What’s wrong?”

“It was here.”

“What?”

She turned around frantically, the monkey starting to squall. “It was _here_ ,” she said, her voice shaking. “I could see the mountain, that edge of the forest – I remember _that tree_.” She raked her hands into her hair, her eyes wild. “It’s gone. Asriel, it’s _gone_.”

He frowned. “Come now, it’s a slash in the air. It’s hard to find. Let’s keep going.”

“ _No_ ,” she said, her voice splintering. “It’s _gone_.” She fell to her knees. “No. _No_.” 

Asriel watched her shake. “Are you certain?”

“Yes,” she cried. “Yes, it’s just – just _gone._ It’s disappeared.”

Asriel looked around, watching the wind ripple the tops of the trees. “I see.”

“How?” she said, tears streaming down her cheeks. “How can it be gone? It’s a tear in the fabric of the universe. Surely it cannot just be stitched back together?”

Then she blinked. “The boy. He could close the windows, as well as open them. I saw him do it. You don’t think – ”

“No,” Asriel said, coming to stand above her. “There are thousands of windows. There’s no reason to think he’s trying to close them, and even if he were, the chance it was this one is infinitesimal.”

“But if _he_ could close them, then perhaps others can too…”

Asriel nodded. “It’s possible.”

Anger flashed across Marisa’s wretched face. “You don’t think _Lyra_ – ”

He considered her accusation. “She did turn out to be brighter than I ever gave her credit for,” he mused. “I suppose tracking us down and banishing us to another world would be a far simpler task than liberating the underworld.” He looked at his lover. “I doubt it, my love. There are many beings who travel between worlds, and we know little about the mechanics. Lyra has done enough; I hardly think she’d concern herself with this.”

Marisa pressed her lips into a tight line, tears dripping from her chin to her collarbone. “My god,” she breathed, her hand rubbing her chest. “There’s no way back, is there? We’re trapped here.”

Asriel let his eyes rove over the landscape, his field of vision filled to the brim with vibrancy and colour and life. The mountain in the distance was a deep, lush green, festooned with jungle, and from this distance the lake sparkled like a melted crystal. A flock of birds flew overhead, vermillion and lilac and cobalt. His mind wandered beyond the horizon, imagining the other lands this world contained, territories in the far north both like and unlike their own, a vast ocean. He sighed and knelt down beside her.

“There are worse places to be trapped,” he said. He pressed his lips to her shoulder. “And worse people to be trapped with.”

She let out a breathy, incredulous laugh, her eyes glittering with tears. “I think you’re the only person in all the worlds who would say that to me.”

He smiled against her bronzed skin. “Then it’s lucky I’m the one who’s here with you, isn’t it?”

She said nothing, frozen like a statue, staring at the patch of air where the window used to be.

She stared for a long while, the monkey chittering, his face buried in her chest. Asriel sat beside her. “Marisa.”

She sniffed. “Don’t.”

“We should go back. It’s almost nightfall.”

“ _No_ ,” she said, bowing her head. Then her head snapped up, her eyes red and wild. “Perhaps you were right, and I’ve made a mistake. Perhaps it is here somewhere.”

“You said you were certain.”

She faltered. “I am,” she whispered, and her eyes filled with tears again.

“My love, let’s return to the lake. You’ll feel better in the morning.”

“ _No_ ,” she said. “What if the window opens again? What if it flickers?”

“They don’t.”

“You can’t be certain!”

“I am,” he said. He stared at the air. “It makes sense, I suppose.”

She sniffed. “What?”

“That the windows need to be closed. We both saw what happened to Dust in the abyss: it was obliterated. Consciousness, love, free will, everything that matters. And if it leaks out in the gaps between worlds, then I suppose they all have to be closed, large and small. That’s part of the work.”

“So we should just accept our fate?”

“I don’t believe we have a choice,” he said, and sighed. “There are casualties in war, Marisa. You know that. The future you wanted is no longer possible. That's just how it is.” 

He reached out and nudged her chin, tilting her head towards him. “There are worse fates, my love. We came precipitously close to one of them.”

She blinked at him, infinite melancholy in her beautiful eyes. “We will never see her again.”

“I accepted that a long time ago.”

A stillness fell over the pair, the only sound the long grass rustling in the breeze. “Marisa – ”

“I don’t want to leave just yet,” she said.

There was another long pause; it was Stelmaria who rose and padded over to Marisa after the silence had settled. She came to stand in front of the distraught woman, their eyes locked together, ice blue meeting emerald. Then the snow leopard leaned forward, brushing her face against Marisa’s flushed cheek. Marisa wrapped her arms around the dæmon and buried her face in the silver fur, her shoulders shaking.

Stelmaria allowed Marisa to sob into her fur until the first sliver of the sun dipped beneath the horizon. “The sun is setting,” the leopard said, her voice rich and soothing. “We have to go.”

They returned to the lake in silence. Asriel tried to reach for Marisa’s hand as they walked, but she slapped him away, cradling the monkey to her chest with both arms. She didn’t say another word until the next morning, when Asriel awoke to find her lacing up her boots, the dawn hardly broken. He rolled over on the blanket they’d laid out beneath the stars and reached over to stroke her back. “What are you doing?"

“I want to be alone,” she said hoarsely.

He sighed. “Marisa – ”

“Don’t follow me.”

She’d disappeared into the trees before he’d had time to rub the sleep from his eyes. He was about to hurtle after her, but Stelmaria stopped him. “I spoke to him while she was preparing to leave,” his dæmon said. “He’ll make sure she finds her way back. We should let her go.”

She was gone for nine days. That first morning, Asriel and Stelmaria had given her a few hours’ head-start, then wandered through the forest until Stelmaria caught Marisa’s scent in the air. She’d settled by a nearby waterfall, which terminated in a great jade-green pool, and Asriel could hear her crying. It was Stelmaria who forced him back to the camp. “She’ll return when she’s ready,” the leopard soothed, distracting him with a fishing expedition. Each morning that followed, Asriel and his dæmon would walk near enough to the waterfall that Marisa’s trail began to permeate the breeze, and when Stelmaria had confirmed her presence, they would turn back towards the lake, leaving her undisturbed but accounted for.

They erected the tent again and Asriel returned to his marine subjects, wondering if he could fashion a grander cage to catch bigger spoils. The time passed quickly, the daylight hours melting away in a haze of sketching and sanding and assembly, with short breaks to fetch food, build fires, and confirm his beloved’s whereabouts. By the time she reappeared, he’d almost forgotten that they’d ventured into this world as a twosome at all.

It was late afternoon when she emerged from the trees, a golden glow cast across the landscape, the segmented leaves sending shadows and beams across the rest of the tropical forest. The golden monkey hurtled towards his dæmon, his fur shimmering as if it were aflame, and Asriel looked up from the fire and knew that it would be alright.

She sat down beside him and picked up a piece of the fish he’d just grilled and prepared, as if she’d never left his side. He passed her the flask and she took a dainty sip from that too.

Silence was no burden for him: he placed the next fish over the fire and began to scoop the soft white meat from the first carcass into his mouth, content to wait for her to speak.

“Xaphania knew the window would be closed,” she said, after a few minutes. “She might even have closed it herself.” He paused his cooking and looked at her, his face bathed in gold, sweat beading on his forehead from the heat of the fire.

“She said that this world was the safest place for us, now, but that one day, it would be the safest place of all. I didn’t understand at the time.” Marisa frowned. “She knew that we wouldn’t be able to get back. That we’d be trapped.” 

“And that no one else would be able to follow us.”

“Perhaps she didn’t mean safe _for_ us,” Marisa said, reaching for another piece of fish. “Perhaps she meant that the worlds would be safe _from_ us.”

He chuckled. “I can’t blame her for that. I did tear apart the sky.” He said it with a savage grin, as if it was the crown jewel of his memories.

“I tore apart children.”

“So did I,” he said, then kissed her. “Though I did it for a worthy cause.”

“Without my research, you wouldn’t have been able to open your window. So it was the same cause, even if we didn’t know it at the time.”

“True. I suppose I owe you thanks, then.” He peered into her eyes, reaching out to tuck a strand of hair behind her ear. “Indeed, I owe you thanks for a lot.”

Their mouths met with equal intensity. She climbed into his lap and took his face in her hands, kissing him viciously as his fingers began to undo the buttons of her dress. He freed her breasts and took them in his mouth, swilling his tongue around her nipples until they were hard, aching points, and then he tugged on them with his teeth. She held him to her chest as he did so, sighing into his hair, knowing that for as long as her skin was pressed against his, she could convince herself that nothing at all was wrong, and that everything would be alright.

The sun had set by the time they’d finished, Asriel’s trousers in a heap by his feet, Marisa’s dress around her waist and half-unbuttoned. The sound of her climax had disturbed the wildlife, and as they meandered back to reality together a cloud of startled parakeets flew overhead.

“Banished to paradise together,” she panted as he peppered her neck with kisses, slowing going soft inside her. “The universe certainly does have a sense of humour, doesn’t it?”

They soon decided to leave the lake and venture on; the plentiful food and clear water had served its purpose, and they soon became restless, in good health and inching towards acceptance of their new reality. They followed a nearby stream, which soon became a river, which led them to the ocean after many weeks of walking.

They had to be judicious with their exploration, for each new patch of ground contained untold wonders, and a hundred lifetimes wouldn't be long enough to examine the world in its entirety. Once the horizon came into view, they agreed not to stop until they reached the sea, though they made an exception for a two-headed snake that they found looped around their tent pole one day, its scales glittering like the most exquisite electrum. They bound its jaws with the vines they’d repurposed into ropes and slit it down the middle, Asriel narrowly avoiding a fang in the plump flesh of his hand. There were a number of two-headed creatures in this world, particularly serpentine animals like snakes and eels and worms, and Marisa and Asriel did not have to say aloud that they were both fascinated by the anatomy. They stayed for several days in that nook of the jungle, dismantling the snake vertebra by vertebra, and then Marisa tied its carcass around the strap of the pack so it could dry out under the sun, before fashioning it into a charming cuff bracelet that she wore around her wrist.

The coast was a sight to behold. They’d scrambled down a great cliff face to reach the shore, and they were rewarded by the sight of pink sand, a delicate rose, like nothing they’d ever seen nor imagined. The beach was vast, stretching out for miles in each direction, and the ocean was merely a small, glittering band on the horizon, such a distance it was from the cliffs. They trekked across the sand until they reached the sea itself, and Asriel held the monkey on his shoulder while Marisa dove beneath the surface to fetch a chuck of the magenta coral that had to be the culprit of the sand’s rosy hue. Later, she slipped the hunk of pink rock into their pack, hoping to scrape flakes from it when they returned to higher ground.

They’d arrived not long before sunset, and so built a bonfire on the beach after their quick dip in the sea, Stelmaria having caught two hulking fish in her strong jaws while they’d frolicked together in the warm ocean. Then they lay down beneath the stars in each other’s arms, replete, encrusted with salt, and elated.

The skyscape was different in this world: no Andromeda, no Orion, no Lyra, which had tugged at Marisa’s chest the moment she’d searched for the small square of stars and found it missing. Asriel had quickly deduced the source of her displeasure, and then selected another star cluster to name Lyra at once, shushing her protestations with a reminder that this was their world, and they could do as they liked: each section of sky was theirs for the naming. This night, to the soundtrack of the crashing waves, they’d chosen a band of stars to christen, a long tail that ended in a blooming cluster.

“Taraxa,” Marisa said, her arm outstretched, her finger tracing the path of the stars above them.

“After the dandelion,” Asriel mused. “Yes, that’s good. We can add it to the map tomorrow.”

Asriel had begun an elaborate drawing of the sky in his notebook, spanning two of the pages, to which he’d add each new constellation and its name as they slowly worked their way across the stars with each night that passed.

If Marisa was grateful to Xaphania for anything, it was her decision to equip them with _two_ field notebooks. One had quickly been designated Marisa’s, and the other Asriel’s, and they were both under strict instruction not to interfere with the other’s observations. As Marisa watched the way Asriel scrawled across the pages, his diagrams hefty, his handwriting looping and large, she knew he’d run out of clean space months before she did, and she smiled at the thought of denying him even a single page, and excoriating him for his extravagance.

They were lulled to sleep by the crash of the waves, the implicit assumption that they would wake to similar sounds, but instead they were both jolted awake in the middle of the night by the monkey screeching and the feel of water coating their bare legs.

A great wave loomed above them and they were silent for a moment, mouths open, dumbfounded as to how these great crests had appeared. Then the wave soaked them both in saltwater and Marisa saw the pack being dragged back into the ocean, a dark patch on the light sand, and she lunged after it.

“Marisa,” Asriel shouted, as she disappeared into the dark after the canvas sack.

“We have to run,” Stelmaria yelled, her fur drenched.

“Marisa!” Asriel shouted again, his heart pounding. The moon was shining a silver light over the beach, the water swirling around them black like ink, and in the haze of the moonlight and the ferocious sea and the night his lover was gone. “ _Marisa_ ,” he roared.

“Asriel,” Stelmaria said urgently, almost submerged beneath the waves, which were rising with alarming speed. Asriel grabbed his dæmon by the scruff of her neck and held her to him, wincing as her claws dug into his bare skin.

“We have to go,” she panted in his ear.

“Where are they?” he said, wading through the water towards the open ocean. _“Marisa!”_

Another wave crashed into them, almost bowling him over. The seafoam glittered in the powerful moonlight, taunting him with its graceful beauty. He was panting, his eyes wild, watching the walls of water out to sea, wondering if she’d already been pulled under.

“Asriel,” Stelmaria whined, trying to climb onto his shoulders.

“I won’t leave her,” he shouted over the din of the waves, and charged forward.

She appeared by his side a moment later, the pack swung onto her back, the drenched monkey clinging to her neck. “Let’s go,” she urged, and she’d taken off towards the cliffs before he had a chance to shake her for the fright she’d given him. He hurled himself through the water after her, his legs burning as he fought the powerful tide, Stelmaria in one arm and the trunk in the other. His eyes were locked to her sodden frame; the moon itself could have fallen from the sky and he wouldn’t even have glanced behind him.

They clambered up the cliff, Stelmaria prowling deftly ahead, the monkey shivering on Marisa’s back. Her shape flowed above him in the moonlight, black lined with silver, and his heart leapt in his chest as he saw her foot meet a slick spot and her legs slip out from underneath her. She fell into him with a moan, clutching her arm, and he held her to his breast, pressing his lips to her briny hair. The waves began crash into the cliffs as they scaled the rocks, the soundtrack to their climb a series of great booms.

Eventually they reached the top and collapsed onto the soft grass, exhausted, sore and scraped. Marisa leaned forward to watch the treacherous churning of the ocean below with disbelief, the lethal reverse of the peaceful shore they’d found only a few hours prior.

As she frowned at the scene before her, chest still heaving, she found herself staring at the enormous moon above, that gargantuan silver sphere that bathed the world in pearl like clockwork.

“The moon,” she breathed.

“What?” Asriel grunted, still lying flat on his back and panting.

“It’s three times the size of the moon from our world. It must create epic tides.”

He sighed, listening to the savage swirl of the sea. “Of course. What idiots we are.”

She nodded, clutching her arm to her chest. She’d sliced it badly on the rock and her forearm was dripping with blood, thick and black in the darkness. She knew she must be dotted with other cuts too: they’d been sleeping nude, and so every inch of her had been exposed to the cliff face.

As she examined the gash as best she could in the dim light, she heard Asriel moving behind her. She waited for his body to engulf hers, for them to watch the tempestuous sea together and marvel at their lucky escape. When his embrace didn’t materialise around her, she turned, annoyed, still clutching her injured arm.

She found him pacing, Stelmaria in lockstep beside him, and when their eyes met she saw that he was angry. “What the hell were you _thinking?”_ he said.

Her eyes were wide. “What?”

“Running into that sea like a fool!”

She glanced at their bag, sopping wet but intact. “All our worldly possessions are in that pack,” she said. “We couldn’t lose it.”

“What use are _things_ if you are dead, Marisa?”

“I wasn’t going to die,” she said, rolling her eyes.

“You don’t know that,” he said, shaking his head. “One of those waves could have pulled you under, and you'd have been dead in less than a minute.”

The monkey huddled closer to her. “Don’t be dramatic, Asriel,” she said, her arm starting to throb as the adrenaline of their escape wore off.

“Dramatic?” he exploded. “You risk your life to save a _notebook_ , and _I_ am the one scolded for grand gestures?”

She frowned. “I wasn’t saving the _notebooks_. Our knives, our bandages, the _bloodmoss._ ” She held up her bleeding forearm. “A gash like this could be fatal without it.”

He blinked at the sight of her arm, the whites of his eyes shining in the moonlight. “Let me look at it,” he said, striding over and reaching for the injured limb.

She leapt to her feet and stepped away from him, clutching the arm to her chest. “I’ll dress it in the morning, when the sun’s up.”

“We’ll dress it right now.”

“No, Asriel.”

She could see his eyes blazing. “Marisa – ”

“Oh, stop it, would you?” she said, shaking her head, salty droplets falling down her bare back. “I am perfectly capable of looking after myself.”

“Says the woman who ran into _that_ ,” he said, pointing to the churning water.

She ran a hand through her hair, pulling it in frustration. “Asriel – ”

“You could have drowned!” he roared, his chest heaving, and as her gaze met his in the opalescent darkness, she could see the distress in his eyes.

His hands were now latched to her upper arms, the pads of his fingers digging into her skin. She shook him off and placed her palm on his face. “You don’t want me to get hurt,” she said softly, stroking his cheek.

He glared at her. “Of course I don’t. I don’t want anything to happen to you. Ever.” He shook his head. “You’re infuriating.” 

She slipped into his arms and kissed him.

She tasted of saltwater, wild and moreish and vital. He clasped her head roughly between his hands and plumbed her depths with his tongue until she squirmed.

“We may well be the only two people on this Earth,” he murmured against her lips. “I’d appreciate it if we didn’t halve that number.”

“You’ve never minded being on your own,” she replied, just to spite him. “I daresay you prefer it. I can think of plenty of occasions when you were vexed by my presence.”

He shook his head, her saliva glistening on his lips. “I’m not simply _alone_ without you, Marisa. You are a part of my soul. What I’d prefer is to remain intact.”

She kissed him again, and he kissed back, and then he drew her down to the grass and into his arms, grateful for the unyielding warm air that managed to lull them back to sleep.

After tending to Marisa’s wounds the following morning, they decided to follow the coast to the great mountain in the distance. They’d vaguely planned to settle by the sea for a period, to examine the marine life, perhaps even to map the tides, but upon witnessing the fearsome strength of the world’s surf, they decided that they were both creatures better settled on land. Soon they descended back into the jungle, marginally more cautious now, their incident with the wild ocean a reminder that even paradise could be lethal.

It soon became clear, though, why even a jungle filled with snakes and jaguars and spiders posed no threat to them. Marisa and the monkey were scaling back down a tree, lunch in hand, her arm loose and dextrous again after months of Asriel kneading the scar tissue. It had begun as a gimmick, him mocking her for her devotion, the only way he knew how to communicate the boundless depths of his gratitude for her months of tender care. But it eased the pain of the limb so much, and increased her field of motion so swiftly, that it soon became its own ritual, each morning and night marked by his fingers digging into the knotted flesh, until many months later she was scaling trees with her dæmon as if she’d been created solely for that purpose. They were descending down a great tree, its bark in rough, regular sections, when they heard a growl nearby and saw a cougar emerge from the trees, saliva dripping from its jaws. “Stay there,” Asriel said, glancing at his lover on the low branch. He considered reaching for the knife, but doubted he could free it from the pack before the animal advanced. His gaze eventually fell to the large rocks scattered nearby, and he hoped that Stelmaria could fend off the animal for long enough that Asriel had time to stone it until it fled or died. Instead, however, the cat took one look at Stelmaria, whimpered, and scarpered, leaving the troupe unharmed.

The same thing happened with the monkey and a group of vicious baboons, and again with another jungle cat, and Marisa and Asriel soon realised that their dæmons caused such distress to the other wildlife – not quite animal, not quite human – that with their souls nearby, it was as if a protective bubble had been slotted over them. They forged onwards at pace after that.

They soon reached the base of the great mountain, the stone black and hard beneath the lush green of the jungle. “Basalt,” Asriel murmured, wondering if this shard of rock was overlayed with his fortress, mere atoms apart but never to be seen again.

They argued about what came next. Asriel wanted to scale the mountain, hoping for cooler air at the top, perhaps even some snow if they camped for long enough at the summit. The tropics were not his natural habitat, and each day of wet, hot air had him sweating and gasping. Marisa and the golden monkey had no qualms about the tropical heat, and pointed to their lack of cold weather gear, hiking equipment and non-perishable food stores as reasons why they should continue along the ground.

Marisa won the battle in the end, not due to quick wit or superior reasoning but because she fell ill. Seemingly overnight, she became fatigued, nauseous, her appetite evaporated, and as she ran her tongue along her teeth, she complained they tasted of metal. At first, he’d accused her of lying, thinking this a ploy to win their fight and nothing more. But after two weeks of exhaustion and illness and meagre meals, he had to concede that her ailment was real.

They ate the same food, drank the same water and breathed the same air, so it was easy to rule out their immediate environment as a cause of her sickness. They presumed it must be a parasite, or perhaps an insect bite, and they decided to settle for a few weeks, erect the tent, and give her time to rest. Asriel boiled a sprig of the remaining bloodmoss over a fire and distilled it into a tea, which she drank hungrily, and though it eased her aches it did little to eradicate her symptoms.

Weeks passed, and as she’d become accustomed to, Marisa woke due to a wave of nausea. She managed to slip out of the tent without fully rousing Asriel, the monkey sprawled across his chest like a baby, the man’s wide hand splayed across his little golden back. His black eyes were open as she extricated herself from the bed, but she shook her head and instructed him to stay. She padded out into the trees alone, the flutter of a bird’s wings mixing with the screech of a monkey and the hiss of a snake to create a symphony of the dawn. Marisa leaned against a smooth rock, soothed by the trickle of the nearby stream, breathing deeply in the hope that it would help the nausea pass.

She was joined moments later by Stelmaria, the snow leopard’s eyes still hooded from sleep. She slumped down beside Marisa, laying her silver head on the woman’s bare stomach, her hot breaths warming the soft skin of Marisa’s abdomen. Marisa stroked the leopard absentmindedly, wondering about her illness, wondering if this was how she finally died, weak and sick and tender in a jungle in another world.

The snow leopard shifted, her wet nose leaving a smudge of moisture on Marisa’s stomach. Marisa wiped it away with her thumb, then smoothed her hand over the curve of her belly to dry it off. Then she sat forward with a start. “Oh,” she said, her hand pressed over mouth.

“What is it?” Stelmaria said. 

Marisa darted back to the tent. The monkey was squirming now – he’d felt Marisa’s shock – and Asriel was frowning, his dozing interrupted. “What’s the matter?” he asked, his words slurred.

She paused, watching him stroke the monkey on his chest. “I think I’m pregnant.”

Asriel pushed himself up onto his elbows. He blinked, his eyes locked on her stomach, and then he met her gaze and chuckled, relief flooding his chest. “Yes, of course you are,” he said softly. He opened his arms to his lover and his dæmon. “Come here.”

Marisa walked over cautiously. “This is a disaster, Asriel.”

“Oh, come now. It’s better than a deadly parasite.”

“It _is_ a parasite!” she exclaimed as she slipped beneath the blanket and into his arms, the monkey scurrying from Asriel’s chest to nestle into Stelmaria’s soft fur.

“I suppose we should have anticipated this,” he said, his fingers carding through her hair. “Are you certain?”

“Time will have to tell for us to be _certain_.” She tweaked his nipple until he flinched. Then she sat up. “Though there is one test we could try…”

Her dæmon captured a frog later than afternoon, the creature squirming and squalling in the monkey’s vice grip. Asriel held the critter down by its moist limbs, allowing Marisa to make a tiny incision with their scissors and pour some of her urine into the cut, gathered in their flask early that morning, after the idea came to her in the tent. “This might not work,” she said, pressing her finger to the tiny slice in the frog’s exterior to stem the bleeding. “I need a syringe, really, but I suppose this will have to do.”

“And now what?”

“We wait. If it lays eggs in a few hours, I am with child.”

He kissed her. “Extraordinary.”

They filled a bowl with water and placed it in their empty trunk, then deposited the frog into the darkness and tried to busy themselves with other tasks. By the time night fell, eight hours had passed, and Marisa could not resist opening the case, one hand resting on her abdomen.

She was greeted by a disgruntled frog and a pile of frogspawn, and she gasped.

Then the argument began. “We cannot bring a child into the world here,” she said, incredulous that he could entertain the notion for even a second.

He frowned. “Why not?”

“There are no other people in this world. When we die, they’d be alone.”

“We don’t know that for certain.”

“We _do_ know that I’m pregnant now. Shall we just hope that we stumble upon civilisation, or else leave the child to suffer?” 

“Then we can have another after this one, and they can take care of each other.”

She stared at him. “Have you lost your mind?” 

“The first child we made was extraordinary, and we hardly got to shape her. Imagine what we could do if we raised the thing ourselves.”

“What are we raising them to do? Teach the animals about the importance of choosing their own path?”

“Who knows!” he said, taking her by the waist, his thumbs brushing across the curve of her stomach. “You say there are no people here? _We_ are here now.” Then he smirked. “It’s a shame they’d have to do some unsavoury things to populate this planet, but it would be possible, if we had a few.”

“You’re disgusting,” she said, shoving him away. “We cannot have a child in this world, Asriel. You must see that it’s insanity.”

“Insanity? It’s the most natural thing imaginable.” He walked over to her and settled his hands on her hips. “Imagine it, Marisa. Imagine _them_.”

She leaned back, unimpressed. “I thought _mother_ was my least compelling shade?”

He stilled his thumbs and sighed, exasperated by her ability to remember every word exchanged between them. “With Lyra? Absolutely. But this would be a different child. A blank slate. A new child in a new world.”

She paused for a moment, then shook her head. “We couldn’t.”

“We _could_ , if we so desired. It’s our decision. That’s the beauty of it.”

“My decision is no.”

He scowled. “After everything we’ve seen and done together, Marisa, you should have a more open mind.”

She scoffed. “ _You_ should ground yourself in reality, my dear. While you’re here crowing about subsequent pregnancies, I’m imagining childbirth in the middle of a jungle with only an experimental theologian to aid me!”

“Oh, I’ve read anatomy textbooks – ”

Even Stelmaria rolled her eyes. “Asriel.”

“Childbirth is a dangerous endeavour at the best of times, let alone under circumstances like these.”

“You told me that Lyra’s birth was without complication – ”

“I was fifteen years younger than I am now, I had a midwife and there was a hospital nearby.” She sighed. “I could die, Asriel. What would you do if it’s a difficult labour? Slice me open on the grass?”

The monkey leapt to her torso and clung to her, wrapping himself around her like an infant. Then Stelmaria padded over and nuzzled Marisa’s knee.

Asriel folded his arms. “You’re all ganging up on me.”

They stared at him, the woman and the golden monkey and the snow leopard. He sighed. “Yes, alright. It’s ludicrous.”

She breathed a sigh of relief. “Thank you.”

“So what can be done about it?”

She exchanged a look with her dæmon. “I have an idea.”

She spent the next few days gathering various herbs, Marisa and the monkey scouring the ground and the trees and the dirt until they had a collection of ingredients piled up in the tent. She crossed her fingers that her substitutions wouldn’t render the mixture inert. Then she began to brew a concoction over the fire, the flask suspended above it by a vine she’d wound around a low branch. Asriel stood nearby, observing, a frown etched on his face. “Are you certain you aren’t a witch?”

“As if I don’t have other reasons for knowing about abortive draughts.”

That piqued his interest. “You tried this last time?”

She sighed, placing her stirring stick on the grass next to the fire. “Not quite.”

He stayed quiet; it was obvious she should elaborate. “I went to a quack in London – a shaman, he called himself, but I doubt he’d ever left the city – in a tiny, dirty shop on Fleet Street. Ghastly place. He said he’d make me a brew that would cause… _termination_ , and I managed to charm him into showing me how it was done.” She glanced up at Asriel. “I figured it might be useful knowledge to have."

His nod soon morphed into a frown. “I can’t say I’m confident about the _efficacy_ of this potion, though; the existence of our daughter suggests the old quack didn’t know what he was talking about.”

She looked bashful then, a tinge of pink appearing on her cheeks.

He narrowed his eyes. “What?”

“I didn’t drink it,” she said tartly. Then she turned back to the fire with a flourish and began to stir the mixture again.

She could feel him gazing at her with a smirk on his face, and shivered. She continued attending to the potion, not moving a muscle as he sauntered over and dropped to his knees beside her, swiping her hair out of the way and pressing kisses to her neck.

“Oh, stop that,” she snapped, pushing him away. When she met his eyes, they were soft, and full of love. She scowled. “It would have been a _sin_.”

That made him laugh. “My love, that ship had already sailed so far away it was scarcely a dot on the horizon anymore.”

He watched her add some more herbs to the mix, ground into a fine powder by the monkey with a rock. “Is this a sin, then?”

The question made her pause. She blinked, her eyebrows raising, as if a truth had dawned on her and caused her a shock. “No. It doesn’t feel like a sin at all, actually.”

He kissed her neck again, and this time she let him, rolling her head to the side to expose her creamy skin. “It simply feels like a choice we’re making.” 

“Good,” he said, a wave of satisfaction washing over him. He looked at the flask. “When will it be ready?”

“I’ll let it stew overnight, and drink it in the morning.”

“I see.” A noise in the distance disturbed a flock of tropical birds, and they flew through the trees above Marisa and Asriel with a squawk, bright and bold and full of life. “And if your concoction doesn’t work?”

“It will,” she said, replacing the cap of the flask. “It has to.”

That night, as they made love, him curled around behind her and clutching her to him, each part of their body pressed against its pair, two puzzle pieces designed to perfectly tesselate together, she let him stroke the small raise of her belly to his heart’s content. He fell asleep with his hand splayed across her stomach, his thumb brushing over the soft skin, and it wasn’t until she’d interlaced her fingers with his that her eyes finally drifted closed, and she joined him in sleep.

She expected to dream of Lyra, as she often did. But the child in this dream was a different child, dark-haired, eyes as blue as a glacier. He was climbing a tree, his monkey-dæmon scaling the branches beside him, and when he picked the reddest, juiciest apple and took a bite, he beamed at her and yelled, “Mama!”

She woke with a jolt, the dawn breaking, the sky streaked with scarlet. She extricated herself from Asriel’s arms, left the tent and downed the entirety of the draught, careful not to spill a drop.

Several hours later, she began to bleed. She felt a wave of nausea first, then a long, deep cramp, which radiated from her abdomen into her thighs, and she knew it was beginning. Asriel was perched on a log they’d appropriated as a stool, using the knife to carve a block of wood. She briefly wondered what it was going to become, sculpted and sanded by his adept hands. Then she returned to her notebook and continued to note down the recipe for the potion, pausing her pencil scratchings as each cramp squeezed tighter and tighter inside her.

She stayed on the grass for as long as she could bear, but the sight of the thick, carmine clots emerging from her body had her rushing to the stream, desperate to wash it away, to not have to bear witness. Asriel saw her move, saw the blood on her thighs, saw the way she was trembling.

“Stop,” he said, striding over as she was about to enter the water. She turned, shaking, tears in her eyes. He dropped to his knees before her, placed a gentle hand on each of her hips, and pressed a kiss to her abdomen. She folded her hands around his head and held him to her, a tear sliding down her cheek as she felt his warm breath against her skin.

She sat in the stream, the monkey perched on the bank, Stelmaria wrapped around him like a blanket. She stood only to begrudgingly accept food from Asriel, her legs like a crimson watercolour, marbled with blood and droplets from the brook. As the light faded from yellow to gold to burnt ochre, Stelmaria dragged the pouch of bloodmoss to the stream, and urged the woman to use it. She shook her head. “No. I want to feel it.”

Their camp in the jungle was at a higher elevation than their first base by the lake, and the stream was shaded by the canopy, which made the water crisp and clear and cold. By the time the sun had set, she was shivering in the water, blue-lipped and tense. Asriel flopped down beside their dæmons, opening his arms to the monkey, who crawled into his embrace.

“Come inside, my love.”

She shook her head. “It’s not over yet. I’ll bleed on the blankets.”

“I don’t care.”

She was like a block of ice by the time he managed to coax her back to the tent. He folded up one of the blankets, which she placed between her legs, and wrapped the other two around them both, kissing her forehead, her cheeks, her chin, and forcing hot tea and meat jerky into her mouth until she had no choice but to laugh.

They were more careful after that. Marisa would choose a stick each month and carve the days into it, banning him from her body during the riskiest week. She’d expected him to scoff, but instead he’d nodded, kissing down her body and swirling his tongue on the sensitive skin of her inner thighs. “There are other things we can do,” he said, positioning her legs on his shoulders with a grin.

Their prevention efforts worked for a long time. Years must have passed by the time she felt the prolonged nausea again, the tender breasts, and the scratches on that month’s stick extended for many more days than she expected. This time, the discussion was minimal: in the intervening years, they’d both remarked often that the presence of an infant would likely have been a detriment to their delicate equilibrium, and not an enhancement. Marisa began to source the herbs for the potion, Asriel sat with her as she moaned through the cramps, and Stelmaria licked and nuzzled the monkey while he watched his woman shudder and squirm through compassionate eyes.

They continued to be fastidious, but as the time dripped on, even Marisa had to believe that her fertile years were coming to an end. Her dark hair was streaked with grey, to her dismay – she’d spent several weeks trying to create a dye from nettles and sage and a black nut they’d discovered in pods in the trees, to Asriel’s great bemusement, his own grey hair glittering in the sun as if Stelmaria had gifted him a swathe of her silver coat – and the lines on their faces were deepening with each day that passed.

That made it all the more surprising when she woke up sick and sore one day, the last pregnancy a distant memory. “No,” she moaned, scrubbing at her stomach. “It can’t be. I don’t believe it.”

They’d slept under the stars that night, the tent superfluous in the heat. They were back on the ground now, near another great pool, surrounded once more by trees dotted with ripe fruit, some familiar from their early months in this world, some delightfully novel. 

She squeezed her breasts and was relieved to find them unswollen, though a cursory glance at her current calendar did show that she was late. She groaned.

The noise woke Asriel. “Some of us are trying to sleep,” he muttered, rolling over on the soft grass.

“I’m late, and sick. _Again_.”

He propped himself up, frowning, his eyes hooded. “The universe does seem keen for us to reproduce, doesn’t it?”

She pressed her hands to her face.

“Can you find the ingredients here?” This part of the landscape was new, and relatively unknown.

“I hope so.” She sighed. “The _one_ benefit of ageing, and it continues to elude me.”

Marisa and the monkey began to search through the ground, Stelmaria lending her keen nose to the endeavour as they struggled to source a few of the herbs, but before she could start brewing the mixture, Asriel began to feel unwell too.

He awoke the next morning in a cold sweat, and Marisa did her best to hide her relief at the thought they might have a shared parasite, rather than a creature draining the life from her alone.

They rested for a few days, drinking plenty of water, sleeping often, but the weakness didn’t ease. They approached the task like scientists: they cut out each new fruit from their diet in turn, they tested a different water source, they raided the soil in search of insects that might bid them harm. They consulted their notebooks, finding their sketches of spiders and ants and beetles, wondering if any of the critters in their new camp had fangs that they’d identified years ago. But the interrogation of their environment yielded few answers. By the time they’d concluded their experiments, months had passed, and while they were no longer concerned that death was imminent, the muscle weakness was worsening.

They’d intended to continue on across the land, but those plans were stalled indefinitely, reasoning that they were in no condition to trek, and that the deep pool and abundant trees and clear stream were too useful to abandon during a prolonged illness.

Marisa was lounging by the pool one day, her eyes heavy, the monkey feeding her slices of soft fruit as she basked in the sun, when Asriel lumbered over and collapsed beside her on the grass. “It’s nothing in this world. It’s _us_.”

She rolled towards him, onto her belly. “What do you mean?”

“Grumman,” he said, his hand on Stelmaria’s back. “He was younger than me, but so frail. Every time I saw him he was weaker. And he was not of our world. He was foreign matter.”

He clenched his jaw. “This world is rejecting us, like a splinter in a finger. It shall erode us until we are gone.”

He expected tears, anger, theatrics of some kind. But she merely nodded, and accepted another piece of fruit from the monkey. “Yes, that makes sense. I told you we didn’t belong here.”

He stared at her. “You’re awfully calm given that I’ve just delivered us a death sentence.”

She smiled at him, her eyes filled with rueful wisdom, as if she knew something he didn’t. “If you’re right, then there’s nothing we can do, is there?” 

“No. Not unless we can get back.”

She nodded. “And that’s impossible.”

“Perhaps not. There must be another window, another _way_ – ” She laughed and he scowled at her. “What?”

“It’s always enjoyable when the tables turn.”

“You don’t care that we are going to wither and die?”

She crawled over to him, pushed a piece of sweet fruit into his mouth, and let him lick her fingers clean. “Every minute after the abyss has felt like borrowed time, has it not? It’s almost a relief to think we can’t run any longer.”

He frowned at her. “We earned every moment here together, Marisa. We achieved the impossible, and were rewarded for it.”

She kissed him, her tongue sweet and soft. When she pulled back, her eyes were glistening. “And what a reward it has been,” she whispered, and he kissed the tears from her cheeks and laid her down on the grass, melding their bodies together in the haze of the midday sun.

Their descent into extinction was a meander, not a dive. Too weak to hike any further, they accepted that this patch of ground, this deep pool of jade-green water, this thicket of trees that bore sweet fruit without cessation, would be their final resting place. They swam in the pool, fed each other fruit, dissected small creatures, much like their early months in this world, though their injured bodies had been healing then, rather than slowly beginning to fail.

They finished Asriel’s map of the night sky, the pages crinkled after their scare in the sea, so long ago now, each constellation finally deciphered and drawn and christened. Their clothes threadbare after years of use, they forgot they’d ever used to cover themselves, and padded naked through the trees, holding each other upright when they pushed it too far and could hardly stumble back to their camp. Asriel woke with the monkey on his chest, Marisa woke with the snow leopard curled around her bare, brown form, and as their minds began to fray, there were a few fleeting seconds when they forgot whose dæmon was whose, and a further shock when they realised that it hardly mattered anymore.

The days melted into weeks and months passed: the sun and the moon danced around each other, heat and cold and silver and gold intertwining until they could scarcely tell night from day. They mostly lay beside each other, the sound of the water soothing their weak hearts, their huddled embrace the core of a collapsing star, its gravity enough to tear a world in two, its atoms bound together so fiercely that separation was not just impossible but abstract, a division by zero, water flowing uphill.

The end crept closer. Day was fading into night, the sun just dipping beneath the horizon, and the whole world was soaked in gold. The pool had lost the light, the water still and black as nightfall cloaked the plain, and the fireflies began to skate across the surface, matching the sunset’s golden hue. Marisa and Asriel lay by the water once more, breaths shallow, muscles weak, Stelmaria sprawled beneath their delicate heads and the monkey nestled between their chests like a baby. Marisa looked over the black pool, the rich glow of the sun, the specks of gold flitting across the surface, and sighed.

“I doubt it’s long now,” she said softly.

“No.”

“I’m so tired.”

“Yes.”

A pause. “I want to go first.”

He rolled his head to hers, and managed a smile. “We’ll go together.”

She shook her head at his arrogance. She had no doubt that conceit would drip from his words even with his last breath. “You say that as if it’s up to us.”

“It is, and we will.” He kissed her head. “I’ve always known we’d leave the world together.”

She scoffed. “ _How_ – ”

“I just knew. The moment we met. That there would never be another second where I existed and you didn’t.” He said it as if it were a base truth of the universe, as instinctive as gravity.

She placed her hand over his heart, feeling the slow, steady beat against her palm. She felt him swallow, and when she met his eyes, she found them glistening. “Marisa – ”

She shifted with a wince and pressed her lips to his. “I know. Oh, Asriel, I know.”

They fell asleep not long after, the golden light passing over their weary bodies until they were bathed in silver, the spray of constellations the most enduring art of their exquisite exile. As they slept, their heartbeats weak but perfectly in time, they were oblivious to the drab, quiet figures perched on a smooth rock nearby, sitting with their hands intertwined. Their deaths exchanged a look, preparing to journey these two ferocious souls through the underworld, grimace through their savage tales and release their cruel essence back into the universe, every atom of him and every atom of her free to wreak havoc in the very molecules of life itself for eternity, in endless, merciless defiance of oblivion.

**Author's Note:**

> This was supposed to be a short story and it spiralled. If you've made it all the way to the end, then a) I love you and b) please tell me what you think. This was so much harder to write than I expected.


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